The Seam in Me

Above Saint-Lary-Soulan

a red helicopter

thrums over

snow-fraught mountains

then drops its charge

I look from beneath

a Coca-Cola parasol

that small flare

against a swell of white

then draw a crow

in my green notebook

moving the charcoal

to its sharpest edge

to make the beak speak

feel it

in the bone

of my index finger

slick black feathers

fuse of a tail

two wings restless

the helicopter rounds again

rotor

charge

release

thinking of the mining town

I come from

my dad in the explosive works

at Ardeer Nobel

his granddad before him

cutting coal from the seam

on his certificate of death:

Burn on knee

Senility

beyond the chalet

the dynamite strikes

the mountain cracks

Its heavy mask

breaks loose

In our Hayocks kitchen

my dad nurses

a crow

his hands ease it

onto the porch step

a small black seam

turns its face to daylight

I’m back

I’m back

I’m back

and takes flight.

Poem note

Written from a memory of Saint-Lary-Soulan in the French Pyrenees, January 2013. 

A spoken-word poem by Claire L. Gibb, published 21 August 2026.