It's Still Life

The Holding Breath

To the 204 men and boys of the 1862 Hartley Colliery disaster — their breath drifts still, coal-dust caught in morning’s blacklung frost. They crawled into the narrow seams where lanterns barely held back the dark, where the air strangled itself thin.

We remember the steel-to-stone rhythm of their pickaxes, the hunger-click of labour, the slow beat of defiance: Enough. No more. This is the debt of dignity owed to every working hand.

Coal ash on the tongue —
nothing left but breath and weight
where the blast once sang.