Tragedy lives with us all. As a child one rails gainst fate, but none can truly be considered adult till they have swallowed that bitterest of pills and learnt that one can not rewrite history. All one can do is learn to live with it. But none ever wholly does, and therein lies the child in us all.

TEARS ON MY FACE

On a February day,
the sea leaden and gray,
you set off for work, down in the mine.
You held my hand
on the path made of sand
as it dropped steeply into the chine.

You’d kissed us all twice
and kissed mother thrice.
The day it was sunny and fair.
I skipped by your side
as, despite riband and slides,
the wind made a mess of my hair.

Down between crumbling rock,
which caught at my frock,
then across the shingle and sand of the shore.
We turned to our right,
where we had first sight
of the mine head that led down, and into the ore.

You kissed me again
and the rest of us, then
you smiled and said, “Sausage for tea.”
You entered the cage,
smiled again and then waved,
and went to work, down and under the sea.

Thirty-seven that day
were entombed in cold clay
when the earthquake troubled the land.
Sons, brothers and dads,
agèd men and young lads
all killed by what none could withstand.

The mine never opened again,
and the sea, the wind and the rain
have vanquished its every last trace.
I’m eighty-seven just now,
but I still don’t know how
to keep the tears, for my dad, from my face.

A chine is a ravine leading down from a cliff top to a beach. There are many such on the Isle of Wight where the word is a common place name, for example, Blackgang Chine.