Skem lies shattered, tumbled to concrete chasms
Through which blow ill, chill winds
That bode but little good - mainly gain, gluttony or greed.
Peace is pilloried for profit, crucified for cash;
Tranquility is tossed to torment of tiresome, repetative trades,
To commerce that no conscience, consideration, care or carefulness knows:
The Tawd is tunnelled and funnelled into puny peripheral pipes,
Is perpetually propelled forward - no meanderings -
No ever widening wave-like circling ripples;
No stippled fish sunning in dappled gleams and glooms;
No changing coolness to frondlike fingers
Trailing soft swirls in the slow flow
As I felt for trout that sensuously swam or stayed
To feel the warmth of thin, lithe fingers,
To be tickled - tamed a time - but never betrayed or banked;
No trees leaning over water - doubling with no dividing,
Seeing clouds tangling twice in Tawd and sky;
Only familiar faces strained and sad and frightened
Seeking shelter in strange, unfamiliar places -
Hideholes in cubed cheese-like castles - multi-holed;
Strange accents, too - alien to gentleness -
Bawling babel-like, confounded and confusing:
All things strange, strained, satiated, saturated ...and I ...a hungered!

Sodom and Gomorrah not fallen but built anew
On the ruins that were Troy, Athens,
Hesperides, Heaven and haven of all my boyish dreams;
And I, like Lot's wife, looking lost, lingering, lonely, longing!
I felt an affinity with Jesus       ...I wept....
And the salt was the so slow so sad trail of my tears.

Oh! Skelmersdale.....Skelmersdale.......
How often would I have sheltered in your shade
And I could not.......
Now, ..... I cannot ..... ever....!!!