A Town Called Sheppton – Poetry by Mark Tulin

A Town Called Sheppton was first published in the now defunct Vita Brevis Press. Featured image from Pexels.com

A Town Called Sheppton by Mark Tulin

My neighbor worked in the mines
in a town called Sheppton,
where heaps of blackness
covered the valleys and canyons

He was an excavating hero,
a prince of the middle earth,
deep, down into a hole
where you could only see
the whites of his eyes

He held his lantern high,
searching through ungrateful caverns,
down an anonymous coal chute
where basement’s blackened
with anthracite coal

Tracks winding down
into the tunnels
where cries echo from lost souls
Men like my neighbor,
suffer from weary lungs,
lies and dirty faces.