The catkins in the pylon hum in harmony with the sibilant trees below.

The osiers are restless.

The morose sky glows?

Terroir: the taste of coal, tar.
A place reclaimed, flooded,
drained, flooded again.
The Dearne in sluggish spate.

Elegant pylons walk across a red coral sky.

I do well not to slide down the mud path and into the canal. Lost between the Dearne and the Dove I’m in a maze of mercury and silver puddles, trail-bike tracks, old sleepers, overgrown sidings. Used ground full of mirrors, the past, ghosts of wagons, cranes.

Alder, hazel, silver birch; hawthorn, rose bay willow herb; brambles hook my feet. Silver birch again. The never failing potency of the list. Broomhill Flash, Old Moor, Ings Dike, Manvers Lake, the Dove, the Dearne, the Don.

The miner turns in bed. The windows rattle. Ghost wagons run the inclines, switch and brake, switch again, shunt, connect. Under a zinc bright moon tons of coal were marshalled, recorded, assigned, moved on to Leeds, to Manchester and East to Hull.

The miner turns over, pulls the night up to his chin, rests his aching back against the wall and dreams a white Egret in Egypt, standing by the Nile; dreams of Lapwing and Golden Plover landing in a pewter dawn at Wombwell Ings. Look over there, yes, there they are, raising their arms.