Of World War
One
Two
And more
Dockside strikes

Before

The city port was plagued
With Black Death
And the thorny wars of the roses
Bloomed
With red
verses white
Pricked
White
Cotton
Gin
Flowed into a tidal basin of poverty
Blacks
Sweated
Traded with white
Rum
Brewed in
From a brewer of green
Industry grew
In a Glover of wealth
Making the city
A pioneer in public health
In the wake
Of the potato blight
The famished Irish left
Their plight
Celts
Flooded the dry docks
With their poetic spirit
Whigs
Poured poteen
Into a decanter of history
Were the schisms of change
Dispersed its light
Into a spectrum of society

After

World War Two
The city boomed
Babies
Arrived
Like a majority of others
I had just given labor

My vote

Is to return to the wonted road
Were your dad became an early boomer
So hold on
Back to Walton
With your imagination
We will hold onto our childhood
So hold on
To your Liver Birds
As we continue to fly
To the road
Were your dad was born
Listen
To a peaceful concord of pealing bells
Six bells chime

At Walton on the Hill
Ah! Me! What smiles and tears
Alas! What doubts and fears
Have changed in the years
At our towns end
Fond memories turn to childhood joy
So pure, so free from earths alloy
Again, I wish myself a boy
At Walton on the Hill

An old man’s reverie
John Wilson, Walton, 1891

Farewell

A gentle peck on the cheek
A wave good-bye
The Liver Birds headed out to the open sky
Soon to return
After their afternoon nap
To tour our great city
On their green feathered back

Remember

We were poor then
As she turns to her grandchildren
And we weren’t living

The life of Riley

Begins
In a blitz
1944
The wonton road
Was unique
And bleak
Because its core
Rose from a blitz of ashes
Prefabricated
Houses appeared from the war debris
Like the phoenix
Anew
Sandwiched
Between the old red brick
Terraced houses
Dressed the street in their two story
Nineteenth century
Drabness
Addresses
The twentieth century’s new arrival

The Prefab

As we once called it
One story
Squatted into a gradualist gown
Of green rice paper
Foam plaster
Walls
Resolute and rough
Support a mortarboard roof
Of pebbled tarmac
Standard grade
Standard level
And standard similarity
Alike
In an accordant uniform of friendly green
Boxed
In homely rows of pound note green
Light
Shone onto their allotted penny red gardens
That in its self
Shook the street
From its fallow doldrums
Most streets were tailored and terraced
In suits of flannel gray
Slates
Sheltered the standard roof of our nineteenth century house
Soon
After the war
Our blitz torn road
Became a hive
Were rubble brewed
Into honeyed cells of green boxed tea
Houses
Became a playpen of construction
Were workmen
Would work

With a kindly eye
They sheltered your dad
As they watched him play
Under a carousel of a sunny sky
He would build his own foundation
While the workman whistled
To Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah day

On Our Street Corner

Sunrise
Shadows
Baptized the new church
With cries of dedication
The spire would steep
Into a steeple of veneration
Roseate stonework
Bricked the sunset
Into songs of praise
Prayer
Mortised the mortar
Of its resurrection

Across

The road
On the facing corner
Of the churches outstretched shadow
Sits
A simple grocery shop
Inside
Standing stiff
Fixed
A closed-minded grocer
Stands rigid
Behind his uncompromising barrier
A skin bald headed man
With a chilling Germanic skull
Shaped and shaved like a Jerry’s helmet
Drilled
With sternness
He would interrogate your ration book
With the harsh efficiency of a Gestapo agent
Needless
To say
We did not shop there
Very much

On our side

Next to this stringent grocery shop
Unscathed
Six Veterans stood
Side by side
Towering the prefabs
With terracing pride
Surviving the Battle of Britain
Our house
Now stood in a virgin forest
Of green clover prefabs
Our house was one of the six wartime survivors
Who survived the bombings of the blitz

As Dusk Enveloped the Dark Night

Dawn

Is about to start
With a heavy cart
And a nosebag of hay
She drags her dreary red dray up the brae
Dawn
Trots away
Braided
In a matted mane of dusty-gray
She rattles
And clatters
With a feather of pride
Silhouetting the streets
With her brownish-gray hide
Dawn
Drops off
A dollop of dung
Steamed in hot bran
A walloping gift
For the old garden man
Scoop it up
If you can
As Dawn
Canters on
With her bridle chain
Burnished with brass
Our old mare of shire
Reins
In with class
As she rattles on
With milk in the glass
Dawn
Stops
With a weary sigh
And a hearty neigh
She nuzzles up
Into a kaki bag of golden hay
Husks discarded
Throughout the day
Dawn
Greets the neighbors
With a cheery neigh
And of course
A bottle of fresh capped milk

To Start the Day

The house whistles with pain
As we pick up the milk bottles
Inside
Larger copper kettles
Fester onto the heat of red-hot coals
Spitting
And sputtering
With steaming rage
Sitting
In a tantrum of torment
Kettles and pots
Sizzle on a black iron plate of rancid grime