He Never Will Go Back Poem by Francis Duggan

He has been in distant places far off of the beaten track
And to his country Hometown he never will go back
Strangers now live in his old home beside the rippling rill
That flows to meet the river on further down the hill.

His parents with the deceased he had not seen them for years
And for his boyhood memories he doesn't have any tears
His sister sold their cottage and she raise her brood elsewhere
They never did get on that well though such things are not rare.

And those he went to school with live far different lives to he
They are seen as more successful and better off financially
The judgemental people of his Hometown he knows too much about
He will not be going back there he will move further south.

The nicer things about his childhood live in his memory
In Spring the gold billed blackbird piped on the leafy tree
And golden buttercups by the old rill in the warm breeze did blow
When he was a young fellow far north and long ago.

The one offspring he has fathered is at her prime of life
And the woman who gave birth to her did not become his wife
He has not seen his daughter for sixteen years or more
And in August on her birthday she will turn twenty four.

He has worked in many Seasonal jobs driven on the highways up and down
And he has lived and worked in the big cities and many a rural town
A man in his mid forties with gray in his hair of black
To the place where he was born and raised in he never will go back.