This fabulous poem is by writing.ie visitor Joe Massingham. Mining Memories was Commended in the Ethel Webb Bundell Literary Awards in Western Australia earlier this year. The portrait is by kind permission of the artist, Ian Henderson, DCA.
Mining Memories
It’s still dark o’clock
and fumbling fingers of recall
fossick through the rubble of remembrance
searching for stones of colour that might
polish up to give some value to yesterday.
But in the night light
textures tell more than colours
and I feel the happiness of other times
when we searched together for the tint
that might glint in each other’s heart.
Those mines are empty now
our picks and sieves abandoned.
You settled for an easier life where
you can choose the jewels you wear.
I kick green stones disconsolately.
