Smithereens Press Chapbooks Left Behind by Colm Scully | Page 15

The shifts that never spoke for years over a stolen sandwich.
The unreported incidents and spillages.
The operator caught fishing off the pier, naked.
The day the ninety meter cubed blew up.
The guys who broke the hundred grand
doing forty hours overtime a week.
The treblers and doublers.
The ‘job and knock’.
The batch that burst the disc and sprayed the roof,
it took five days to clean up.
The canteen food.
The lives that grumbled and gave out
but only lived for coming in the gate,
and those that hated every second they spent
within this place.
The threatened strikes.
The barbecue nights.
The wine reception where the new GM got sozzled with the rest
and sang Amhrán na bhFiann (though he was Swiss).
The comradeship, the hope.
The buzz towards the end.
The characters.
The nicknames;
Hatchet, Player, Ten to Two, The Lord.
Ger’s chatter casts across me as I dream.
‘This way lads’ he says, and leads us on.
He marks the time sheet.
We disconnect the analyser we’ve come to salvage
and spirit off to our own plant.
What’s left behind, depreciated down to zero
on some bondholder’s bank book in New York,
owed twenty times and never paid.
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