Milltown Legacy

I am the spirit of fetid cabbage
abandoned in the sun…
a hod of mortar mixed with
the sweat and broken backs
of those that lived
and died before me,
their lives counted as
nothing more than
dirt and grime packed under nails,
or their dirty children,
ragged and loved,
flaking like paint on brick
that now crumbles around me.

Dented, and sadly rusting
like the hulking grey
Pontiac in the drive,
my father comes home
from 16 hours in the mill,
stinking and swearing…
hiding whiskey bottles in the cellar,
stacked like coal
waiting for the furnace,
a crumpled Camel butt
dangling in his lips…
wheezing and cursing
the liquid that fires his heart
and looses his belt strap
across my back,
cursing my promise
just as smoothly
as scotch loosens his tongue…
his spirit lost to me.

I am the cursed memory of
the smell of the fetid cabbage
that sneaks under the door,
hiding from the clamber of
the paper machines
and spinning wheels
and the shrieking laughter
of tattered children,
their mothers screaming for quiet
and to be left alone.
The sameness of these sounds
still announces nightfall,
as the lights haunt the river…
casting roaring shadows
of the men bent under
the incessant hum
of the machines.

In the silenced voice
of those memories
my father’s anger turned to dust,
finally crumbling and dying,
buried with the closed factories…
the bent lives of coal weary men
and the shrieks of tattered mothers,
children begging to be left alone.
As I dribble my life out
on the last bits of paper
my father brought home stolen
from the mill, I still feel
the sting of his belt strap
across my back.