No grave could contain him.
He will always be young
in the classroom
waving an answer
like a greeting.

Buried alive -
alive he is
by the river
skimming stones down
the path of the sun.

When the tumor on the hillside
burst and the black blood
of coal drowned him,
he ran forever
with his sheepdog leaping
for sticks, tumbling together
in windblown abandon.

I gulp back tears
because of a notion of manliness.
After the October rain
the ****-heap sagged
its greedy coalowner's belly.

He drew a picture of a wren,
his favourite bird for frailty
and determination. His eyes gleamed
as gorse-flowers do now
above the village.

His scream was stopped mid-flight.
Black and blemished
with the hill's sickness
he must have been,
like a child collier
dragged out of one of Bute's mines-
a limp statistic.

There he is, climbing a tree,
mimicking an ape, calling out names
at classmates. Laughs springing
down the *****. My wife hears them
her ears attuned as a ewe's in lambing,
and I try to foster the inscription
away from it's stubborn stone.