Coal Miner's Mother

He stood there in the late afternoon rain Holding his tin and thermus In coal blackened hands Hatless as the water ran through his hair Streaking white tracks down his face To zebra his cheeks and whiten the nape of his neck The wet black hair clung flattened to his head He turned his head up into the soft rain In moments he was white again That pale white white that seldom sees the sun Winter white his mother called it sadly He wondered what the woods were like Where she so often went to harvest food And all those other weeds she boiled or dried Was it just last week that she had died?