BRYTER LAYTER

Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

Morning rain soaks my clothes, my hair, my skin,
I do not care. I am not there.
I study the mortar between the crumbling bricks
in this old wall built by the calloused hands of men who’d served
on the Somme and who’d been called ‘such dirty scabs’
in 1929 by striking Salford dockers;
they’d hung their heads but they had mouths to feed.
They’d taken any work they could get,
Men carved their initials and the date 1929 on the granite bridge
that took them over to…