Coal Ash Maisey

 

 

Fingers gnarled like liquorice roots

Arthritic, bent and twisted.

Filthy blackened fingernails

Her crooked digits blistered

She stoops to rake the fire

An avalanche on the grate

Another burn on her pinafore

A sad, pathetic state

Consumed in ash from the hearth

A cloud both thick, and hazy

In her hair, and on her clothes

They called her Coal Ash Maisey

 

Her sunken cheeks were hollow

As she deigned to leave her teeth out

She never puts them in these days

She’s nowt to smile about

She radiated sadness

Black clouds, darkened her door

As ash piled up on the fireplace

And spilled across the floor

She never did her housework

Too languid, frail and lazy

She didn’t expect visitors

They called her Coal Ash Maisey

 

 

With no pride in her appearance

And ash from head to toe

She never changed that pinafore

She had nowhere to go

Except when she walked up to the gate

To watch children in the street

Before she shuffled back indoors

Old clogs upon her feet

The neighbours tret her with disdain

And thought her somewhat crazy

But everybody knew her name

They called her Coal Ash Maisey

 

 

Once back inside her hovel

She reached up to the shelf

In an old dog-eared scrap-book

Was a picture of herself

Sepia, mottled and faded

It was Maisey with her beau

A different girl, in a different world

When Maisey was with Joe

She shed a little tear as she

Reminisced the days he

Said he’d come back, safe from t’war

And he called her “My Sweet Maisey”