Kevin Hulme

Along This Path

This Path saw many men on a morning,

Walk to work ‘Lowry-like’ To a new shift.

Laughs at some Smutty joke, that goal Off-Side,

Sons dressed as fathers, fathers dressed as Grandfathers, the result of lost ambition.

For there lying up ahead the Factory looms like a Dystopian City,

Through the gates and wages for odd nights out,

Or stretching to a wet week in Blackpool.

Night-Shift  pass along ready for warm beds,

Warm Wives and the emptiness of the Hours. 

But when the axe did fall, it severed clean.

No Member from the House of Fawkes could help,

How the Job Centres gut was glutinous,

All dignity striped and cast in a heap.

Sons broke briefly, fathers broke mortality; 

Now this Path is quiet as an old Sabbath.