'WAITING FOR ME DAD'... (My poem inspired by another Leigh Lambert painting...)

 ‘Waiting For Me Dad’…

(Inspired by Leigh Lambert’s painting…)

Sullen doors, duplicated,

Stand erect off the street

Hiding truths and hardship.

Windows copied and pasted

Onto the terraces along the road

Confiding nothing but kinship.

Boot-smoothed stones, replicated,

Shine grey on the pavements,

Sliding through the grim township… 

Tired men, expressions wry 

Spill out from the pit,

Hunched grim in automation.

Caps on heads, some awry,

Teeming away from the headstock,

Its wheel poised in fascination.

The colliery glares down at its prey,

Escaping the coal-face, heading for home:

A mundane, insular and gloomy repetition…

And then a small boy drops his football,

Arms raised but not in a goal celebration.

He spots his dad among the mining clones

And love paints their joy into animation…

Pete Ray

Leigh Lambert’s ‘Waiting For Me Dad’ really got to me.

I never waited for my dad to return from work.

There was little joy either.

He collected insurance from people’s houses.

He always seemed to find his policyholders more interesting than his wife and child at home.