My first day down the Pit.

Vivid recollections of my first day down the pit at the age of fifteen.

Most of the men in the pit were kind and helpful, but not all.

I used to cycle up the ‘narrow path’ from Newbiggin to Woodhorn.

My Mother asked me to describe that day and I wrote this poem

 

Up in the morn when the light kisses dawn

along on a bike to the pit

Follow the path that follows the line

where the coal wagons sit

 

Filled with excitement yet terror and fright

in to get changed with the rest

who tease and rib with never a slight

each having withstood the test.

 

Up to the pit head and through the airlock

into the flat on the crown

sitting on haunches or ‘honkers’ they call them

as the miners wait to go down.

 

A steel rope is flashing coming up at high speed

lifting a cage from the depths

clashing and clanking with ear splitting noise

till the cage comes to rest on the keps.

 

Earth’s oldest smells mix with cigarette smoke

as the miners suck strong the last draw

then they enter the cage which will carry them off

to caverns beneath the earth’s floor.

 

‘Quick’; into the cage all packed in there tight

wearing a battery and a hat with a light

the keps are withdrawn and the cage starts to fall

and weightlessness happens and voices can’t call

 

It falls down forever; Dear God; will it brake

will the man in the winding house stay wide awake?

or will he forget and the cage falls to hell

and no one will know of their thoughts as they fell.