Coal Dust

Coal Dust

He was born in 1919, in a world hard and dark,

Where the sky was often gray, and life left its mark.

From the start, the coal dust whispered his name,

A miner by trade, by legacy, by flame.

At just fourteen, the war came calling loud,

But he stayed in the pits, with his head unbowed.

Not by choice, but by work, did he stay,

Escaping the war that stole others away.

Coal workers kept the wheels of industry spinning,

While young men in uniforms dreamed of winning.

He worked beneath the earth’s dark face,

While others went to war, lost in that race.

The pits ran on, through the roaring war,

He worked with grit, his hands worn raw.

Not with a rifle, but with a pick and a spade,

He fought The Wars battles, underground.

The earth gave him work, but it took back more,

Coal dust, thick as night, filled every pore.

For years he labored, through every dark shift,

The weight of the world in every lift.

The years passed, and his hands grew frail,

The dust that lingered left its own trail.

Lung cancer claimed him, in 1988,

At sixty-nine, it was oh too soon.

He’d spent his life in the belly of coal dust,

A miner’s son, a miner’s own.

Through the dust, through years and the strife,

He carried the weight of a hard, hard life.

He was my best friend, my heart, my guide,

A man who worked, but never would hide.

The war took so many, but he stayed to fight,

With coal as his weapon, with the pit as his light.

I cry every day, though the years have passed,

For the man I lost, so strong, so steadfast.

He was more than a miner, more than a name,

He was my father, through heartache and pain.

The coal dust is still in the air I breathe,

A reminder of all that I grieve.

For George Hurst, my dad, my friend,

Whose love for the earth could never end.

His name lives on in every vein,

Of coal, of stone, of dust, of pain.

A tribute to him, to his hard-won fight,

A legacy carried through day and night.

In Coal Dust, I wrote his story, raw and true,

A man of strength, a man who knew

The weight of the earth, the cost of the fight,

A man who worked by day and night.

The world moves on, and the dust settles deep,

I’ll carry his memory, Dads love I’ll keep.

For my dad, George Hurst, the miner who stood,

A tribute to him in the coal and the good