Poetry

(The word thee is a Yorshire word still used today it means you)
(Spanish Winter refers to the Flu epidemic that killed 18 million in 1918)
.(the red step is what you see on old terraced houses which are always curved from generations of scrubbing. Sheffield in South Yorkshire still has many properties with this step.

The Red Step and Thee
.
Progress dissolves the paint of  Lowry’s image
never to be seen  again in children’s eyes.
Faceless individuals
blurred in match stick graves,
witnessed by strangers
 from a forgotten window
In the clouds of the last steam  train.
.
The homes of yesterdays hovel
covered in blackened walls of soot.
Leaves a legacy
that the faeces of  wealth has moved on
and brown field is the apology
that council  apostles  give.
.
Still the echoes of humanity
gives way to a church
that only the old can see.
The last survivors of a planet
Where rescue has been abandoned by time.
.
Memories of Jericho greet
the historians camera,
as the dust removes the sun
from cataract eyes holding the past
 .
The smash of the wrecking ball
mimic’s a galaxies demise.
The stars of yesterday
leave a trace of  community
where the  crucible of men,
were born in corrupted air that  hides
the sacrifice of life.
.
An equation that  is beyond  this universe
for life is an illusion that only fading eyes can see.
 Yet suffering and graft is survival,
the heat of  furnace puts bread on the table
while the molten metal reflects
 the souls of men to God.
.
A reflection that reminds the living,
of the aching  poverty that haunts
 a callused hand,
 reaching  for a drunken solace that gives
existence to a temporary peace.
.
While a palace called  the workhouse
competes with mortality like a dying star.
Churning  the names of  nobody into oblivion.
.
Rest is for the fools on the hill
while sleep harbours the devil.
Bread will burn  only for 30 pieces of silver
and Sunday will always demand
 a service to God.
.
Life  bides its time in a failing body,
old age will fill this dark space.
Never to be spoken.
For youth is best savoured while it lasts.
.
Redemption is found in a girl with rags for pigtails,
who sees  the boy  in taverns light.
Pock marked and spoken in a language
that only thee will understand
.
This girl is where creation takes back all that is lost
for her home is the only universe that matters.
A terraced house is a place of love
where the horrors of life cannot pass.
.
A sanctuary where the roots of creation
mirror the seedlings of a  forest to come,
that is protected by an  ancient cross
which no atheist can steal.
A humble red step,
curved  like the cup of Christ
.
Here lies the history of forgotten souls.
A family known only to the ledgers quill.
Dirty feet,  tiny and large,
anointed  by a destiny that could not be avoided
Happiness is to savour and share
the bread and dripping 
Scraped in obedience
of a penitent wage.
.
Welcome  cannot afford a mat.
A greeting is met by a red step
that only a true King would understand.
Kept sacred  in cleanliness
by scrubbing away the misfortunes of life.
This is the shield
of a proud woman who bled away her life
for family and husband
and children lost to disease and poverty.
.
Happiness and sorrow will always cross this step
but all will find absolution.
For woman  is  the priest and confessor
she is the oak that defies this darkness.
A girl apprentice turned master
in the  keeping  of the red step.
.
And though her flame blew out
in the wind of a Spanish winter
an ember of light still flickers in the sky.
.
Not sought by astronomers
nor wished on by lovers.
She is just there.
Watching over the forest
that her spirit created
Known only to God
and the children that love left behind..