You Do Not Fit The Bill Poem by Francis Duggan

Do you live in a town where you feel a stranger though you have lived there now for a few years
And you frequent the local pub quite often and talk to the locals as you drink your beers?
But of their group you do not feel a part of you will never be seen as a local here
Even though you join them in the pub happy hour and joke with them as you drink your pot of cheer
Though nice to you they do not see you as a local to them you are the fellow from elsewhere
One who cannot lay claim to a local ancestry a fellow from the bigger World out there
They do not want to get to know you too well since in the town they feel you may not stay
So many people like you come to work and live here for a few years and then they pull up stumps and move away
You will never be a local you're not born here and in every Countrytown it is the same
Even though many of the locals seem to know you and in greeting even call you by your name
To be a true local you must be born and live till you die here in Countrytowns it has always been this way
You live your life here marry bring forth children and with the local departed when you die you lay
And that is all it takes to be a local you must be born here and here you stay
And you do not fit the bill you were not born here and here you surely will not grow old and gray.