NIGHT SHIFT

My eyes grow weary,
With drooping lids,
Red rimmed and sore with strain.
My head hangs heavy,
With a constant ache
That seems to numb the brain.

My legs grow weary
From journeying
With slow, uncertain gait
As thick clouds curtain
The moon and stars:
And sleep?  But Tantalus bait.

At last the colours
Of welcome dawn
Stand at the distant bar
And the great, black bottoms
Of night's armada
Are reft with a ruddy scar.

Then, blood runs hotly
Through throbbing veins
As the sloth of night is shed.
And on that glorious
Warm, red, morning sun
My pallid skin is fed.

Don worked for the National Coal Board, the NCB, for several years before he left to go and work for the Severn Trent Water Board at Melbourne. He was an underground worker, perhaps involved in safety checks, but he did not mine coal himself. He often told of walking for miles underground on a shift and literally meeting no one.  It was often during these times his very philosophical mind turned to his own poetry, after years of studying that of others.

He mainly worked at Lount Pit, and then later at Snibston.  There came a time when the underground galleries of three pits, Lount, Snibston and South Leicester all connected up, hence the very long nightly tramps along brightly lit tunnels.