and then the canary stopped singing......

Noon-stone shrapnel
Bang / slung at lungs
Firedamp breath s(t)inks
As an anaemic sunset doused

There is no coal in mine s(tr)eams here
(Only another year)

Ring-a-ring-a belladonna
Nurse pockets full o’ poison
(Only another hospital)

Snow on fingertips from my first winter trace
Honeycomb whorls on summer’s last hive -
The man who sells rain plucks
Broken ribs of the skies

If such deaths appear to be small
Tall
Stands the conscripted remembrance
//
Upon slumber
Armies alert to gunpowder of the night

Biscuit tins of memories
Crumbs for starving birds
In these motherlands
There are many fathers

On the banks of Afon Dyfrdwy
We sit down and weep awhile
Thunder seems to crack across the border /
It is only trundle of tractor heaving
Slate thick granite to another place
Always another place

A shoeless child on a swing wheezes
Where ever you are I hope you’re singing

And somewhere
A canary stops singing