The man asked the other day
In the big box store.
Summer has expired
And now he returns to work
With projects unfinished.
I smile, being a writer,
Knowing each day
There’s another project waiting.
But where’s the working class?
The thought haunts me
As I drive back through our Victorian village
Admiring the stately houses.
More than a century has passed
But these brick dowagers
Have aged quite well—
They look bright and cheery
In the mid-afternoon light
Filtered through leafy Maples.
They remind me somehow
Of an aged port wine
Mellowed in oak casks.
For one moment, in the trembling light,
The dappled wooden porches
Are peopled with women in long dresses
Wraiths from a gentler time,
Basking in the last rays of summer
With their husbands,
Enjoying a break from the grind.
Six days of labour and late hours
For one day of rest
And a yearly holiday…
It hardly seems worth it.
But here we are
In the twenty-first century
Trying hard to fake it—
I hark back to a gentler time
When holidays meant something,
And rang soft with muted church chimes.