Grandfather
Gentle keeper of bees, with walrus
Moustache stained by pipe smoke;
Falkirk miner, half-blind,
Burrowing and blasting shafts
Through the Carboniferous Age,
Illuminating with his Davy lamp
Friezes of centipedes and ferns,
Dead a million years ago,
Glimpsed and obliterated
In the swing of a pick.
I met him in the Summer of ’48
When, unblinking, he outstared
The midday sun.
Alex Scobie