Photo: WHB – Somerset, 2019 ©
COFFIN OF IRON
He had died of his wrinkles
Liver spots and age lines
Gnarled and creviced skin
Dusted and singed
By his Lifetime’s fevered furnace
His lungs smoke-charred
Legacy of a thousand undoused fires
As old as the hills he trod
As the bubbling beck he bled
I see six stalwart pall bearers
Hard as ancient twisted nails
Arise from their bed of iron
Raise the dead-weight anvil
His final ferrous coffin
To shoulder height
Begin a steady passage
Through the leaden winter streets
Beneath those snow-clad Northern Hills
Their shrouded clouded sky
Seemingly forever draped
Atop the silent iron tomb
Carried through the dark gate
To its final resting place
Fitting memorial to a smith’s life
Gifted again to the ironstone earth
In memoriam: Harold Booth, Yorkshire blacksmith & farrier; 1909 – 1987
From a son to his father
Roland's Ragbag 