My grandfather was a diamond miner, down in North Africa.
One day deep at work in those dismal caves,
His bronze brown skin baptised by the hot, heavy, teary sweat,
That bled like a refreshing, summer rain from mid-day's labour,
A fellow miner's pick flew free from his grip;
It became a mad dervish, spiralling effortlessly,
With fate's terrible weight and necessity
Backwards towards my poor grandfather.
It's iron claw punctured him straight through the heart.
If our lives were like perfect flowers, poking upward through the
brown soil of eternity, we too would have, by now, been picked.