Milltown Belle

Face framed by silken strands, tobacco-soaked and stringy;

Sandals scoured by calloused soles, her jeans worn and clingy.

A little Sunfire, manual shift,

Between trials, travels, toil and thrift,

Revving, rolling…gone adrift,

Inhabiting the house in youth she’d fought to flee,

Before she chanced to fill it, and somehow grew alone,

Gripped by bills, petty thrills, work that’s cheap but steady

And some half-forgotten dream that weighed her like a stone.

*

Factory town, thirty years run down,

Where the sun seems dull at hot midday

And, firm-lipped, she seems to drown

As what has been devours what may,

Ray-Bans hiding vivid visions

Her ill-read tongue would strain to speak;

Keeping safe from neighbourly derision

What a lifetime’s stumbles eloquent leak.

*

The idle mill’s time-tired eyes are bricked, or broke, or blear;

Like hers, unflinching, they’ve never cried a tear.

The sultry streets lie silent, but for a distant mower’s whine;

She shuts the door and hits the road, still seeking for a sign.

*

* * *

Copyright © 2018 by M.G. Warenycia