Northern Lines

Northern Lines
By
Jack Hughes

I’m on the Great North Road,
The road to the Great North.
You can get off anywhere in the North
If you want, but I’m not because
I’m going to the Great North.

I’ll get off at the A19 and head
East to the sea, to where uncles
And cousins once worked underground
Cutting coal and on boats catching cod.

This is the Great North, the north of
The Tees, the Tyne, the Wear. Of Durham
Hartlepool, Sunderland and Newcastle.
Of Viz, of unexpected Lowrys, of the Baltic Exchange.

Where St James’s isn’t a church, the
Light is found in a stadium and an Iron
Angel stands sentinel. Where spires and
Magnificent bridges and great civic edifices
Are testament to the absence of winding gears
And to the ghosts of big ships on slipways.

The Great North where language, accent
And dialect talk to us of Viking invasion
And Angle incursions. Where pitmen painted,
Artisans and artists crafted, musicians play
And jokers joke. And where people drink
And they dance. Oh how they dance and sing.

Because, despite the efforts of the Philistines,
The men and a woman of profits, balance sheets
And bottom lines. Of the economic crimes and
Attempted social genocides of the 1980s,
This is the Great North and it hasn’t been beaten.

©Jack Hughes 2012