This blackened town
Choked to death in coal dust
Pit and mill and factory
Where people earn a crust
All gone now just memory
The air is bracing clean
The pitmen and their whippets
Nowhere to be seen
Thank God it’s gone
The age of coal
My father’s fated job
His father before him
Trying to earn a bob
And women stood behind a loom
From morning light till dark
All gone now the Tyldesley air
Welcomes back the lark
But life was good despite the grime
Folk make the best of it
School and football
Children’s rhyme
Our world we’re abreast of it
The Bottom Field ’s now empty
No one playing there
But this quiet Sunday morning
I hear voices on the air
Brian Fahy
13 November 2022
Erris Poetry 