THE RIVER
Feb 03, 2022
1 minute
Poem by Claire Orchard
Illustration by Ione Rail
A team of coalmen, blackened and sweating,are alreadythe monster fly wheel turning, the narrow chimneysending up its steady taper, and there’sthe fourteen-year-old who will be my grandmother,lifting her shawl over her head and tucking it tightinto the collar of her coat as she follows her motherout into the nippy mouth of this gloomy November.
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