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bog people

I have seen
said the woman
a life of endless struggle
of children dead
before their time
of land unyielding in
its fruit and in its
clime … unending
unforgiving, vast.

I have seen
said the boy,
the blackened faces
of my friends
toiling through the
long summer days
to harvest the dark
light, the winter
heat from
clagging, clawing,
fastness,
the cotton, waving at
sea in caressing breeze,
the skylark,
the rain, the fun.

I have seen,
said the man,
the streets of New York,
London … Birmingham,
the noisy, clattering
streets, the highness,
the lowness, the narrowness,
searching, searching
for work, for money,
for home, for life,
for a space of our own
for we are the bog people.

I am the darkness,
the whiteness, the wind,
the cold, the heat,
the life, the all-enveloping
mist, the swirling,
breathing all hearing,
dripping, sapping,
entombing vastness
called home.

Poetry by Peter Humphreys