Cotton Mill Memories Poem by John Carter Brown

Cotton Mill Memories

The air was always thick with cotton fibres;
but not that you could see them all the time -
Only when a shaft of light, through a window,
was angled as it fell across the grime.

Line-shafts hid the ceilings, and whirred away the hours,
stopping only once at mid-day;
Then a one hour rest to eat (which always seemed too short)
That time deducted from your pay.

The work, though relentless, didn't seem taxing
at fifteen, then sixteen, and I took it easily in my stride.
I was never afraid of it anyway, though in the card-room,
for the idle, there were plenty places to hide.

Eckersley's Mill number three was my lot, about four years,
getting there by bus, though I could just as easily have walked;
Again, at fifteen, this wouldn't have been something
about which I would have worried at all, or baulked.

At shifts end, the last job for the workers was to
rid ourselves of the web of dirty-white,
covering our clothing and exposed faces, before returning home
duly cleansed of the daily cotton blight.

Now, no one ever got rich by carrying 'laps' - that's certain,
but riches fell to me from day one in the card-room, and before:
I met a boy of my own age, who became my best friend,
as we both strode through the reception door.

Both taken on, in the same mill, the same room even,
and to top it all off, both avid Beatles devotees;
As close as brothers for years until, by circumstances,
our little pod was split, and away rolled both peas.

By John Brown April 2020