BEAUTY SPOTS OF BIRMINGHAM: A NEW POEM...

Beauty Spots Of Birmingham…

The Park is a wasteland with Western Front trees,

A no-man’s-land by grey skies maligned;

Empty tins and beer bottles lie scattered,

Near the ‘Don’t Touch’ and ‘Keep Off’ signs…

The River is really a sewage works’ spillage,

Oozing from a pipe, where a dead cat sprawls;

Smoking factories lurk ‘neath the grey sky backdrop

And in the stench and filth, vermin crawls…

The Mountain is a dung heap of muck or waste,

Factories clutter a charcoal grey sky;

A solemn pony lingers, as its driver digs

And a bottle and a boot near the foot of the pile lie…  

The Woods is a saw mill for building provision,

Its chimney pokes at a sky of blue-grey;

The miller hauls planks to pile like a tepee

And logs lie seasoning, to saw another day… 

The Cascade is falling of water from guttering,

A consequence of the harsh grey sky’s heavy rain;

The Brummie’s hat flies off, he drops his umbrella

And the beauty spots of Birmingham impress us again…

Pete Ray

October 2017

A postcard published by HB Series, number 3231. 

This brilliant offering again comes from Mary B Harding’s book, ‘Comic and Novelty Postcards of Birmingham’, published by Maxam.

Birmingham is the city of my birth…