image credit Celia Ferguson
HISTORY IS BURNING
Startling bright against the night skyline
History is burning
A community in mourning
Grieving generation
Of Flax Mill workers
Gone before them
Generations of souls
Who had walked the roads
To the Mills hard work
Shout out from their graves
In incredulous disbelief
At 21st centaury senseless
Indifference for the
Place of their working lives
A community in disarray?
Or, a phoenix rising from the destructive devouring?
Raking over smouldering remains
Memories treasures
Saved
Tell their own tales
From 1835 ‘til present years
Timber dry
The desire to destroy
The strike of a match
Workers’ pride
Lost in the blink of an eye
Without a backward glance
Sirens wailing screams
Water wheel throbbing
In an effort to save the Mill building
Once it sustained families’ lives
In surrounding towns and countryside
Blackened brick
Ghostly shell
Herdsman’s Mill
What’s left of it
Wind whistles in sombre soprano’s style
Through blackened spinning rooms
That once housed humming looms that
Spun an Irish linen tune
To the echo of workers earning
History is burning
Gemma Hill August 2016
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