Lonely Town

This is one of Jack’s longer poems, is undated and has not been published before. It reads as if it truly was a personal experience.

Lonely Town

A little business away from home
In a strange town on my own
Took a room in a small hotel,
Bed and wardrobe and a musty smell.
A mealtime spent in a corner cafe
Watching people happily chatting.

Began to think of friends back home.
Wished I had not come on my own.

Then outside on a busy street,
People homeward bound on clicking feet,
To a cosy room and smiling faces,
Little arms outspread for Dad’s embraces,
A fireside tale and so to bed,
God bless a little sleepy head,
A cosy chat with wife a-sewing,
How happily the time is flowing.

Four little walls, a happy home.
Wished I had not come on my own.

A cinema light shines in the distance,
A quickening step, a show of interest.
The film that is on I have seen before,
My spirits dampen down once more.
I walk about this soulless town
With faceless people all around.

These warren streets to them are home,
Wished I had not come on my own.

Oh man-made scar of bricks and stones,
Do your exiles dream of home?
Does anybody shed a tear,
And really wish that they were here?
When knockers verbally flay your hide,
Is anyone stung with civic pride
To wave your banner all unfurled
And proclaim your virtues to the world?

An owl screeching from a parkland bower,
A distant clock tolls out the lagging hour.
Tomorrow from this depressing gloom I shall break free,
This rotting town will see the last of me.
And so I walk back to my hotel room
And try to sleep, to hasten morning’s bloom.

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Men At Work

In this picture Jack is second from the right, standing next to his father Sidney. On Jack’s right is his brother-in-law Joe, his sister Lucy’s husband and far left, his brother-in-law Cyril, Ena’s husband (my father). They were working on laying a new garden path at home in South Oak Lane, Wilmslow when they posed for this photo opportunity!

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The Vagrant

This poem was written around 1988-89 but was never published.

The Vagrant

The waning light gently ushered
The park to silence.
Waylaid by this hushed blossoming
Of whispered calm, I browsed
Thoughtfully on the succulence of
The evening, the nearby road noise
Veiled by whimsical vagaries
Of the mind.

Suddenly a distant farewell flung
On the silence, released from a long
Grey cavern of half recognition a
Black billowing shadowy vagrant
From some other time, some other place.
I sat uneasily with him, a frightening,
Faceless, shapeless thing, sitting on
The edge of recall looking for a home.

The park closing bell rang out.
Momentarily breaking his hypnotic
Hold. I rushed out through the gates
Into the welcoming hubbub of people
And traffic and began to laugh with
Relief at my own foolishness, when
From deep, deep within I heard a
Hollowed whispered – Au Revoir.

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In Memoriam

This little poem is another previously unpublished gem. After looking at some old family photos in recent posts it seems appropriate here.

In Memoriam

Gothic shaped headstones,
Lichen covered last laments,
Wasteland of weeds,
Long lost sentiments.
Here among brambles,
Leaves, knee high grass,
Memories though etched in stone
Are as windblown chaff.

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Jack’s Parents

Here is a picture of Jack’s mother and father, Margaret and Sidney Wlliamson, taken in the garden of their home probably in the the early 1950’s.  Sidney died round about 1953 if my memory is correct.

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