I drove through Franklin, NH, last weekend and was reminded again of how the world has changed in the last fifty years.

Our country’s economy has transformed from a manufacturing base to one dependent on service businesses and high tech. In the process we have witnessed many factory towns become invisible.

The smoke stacks have gradually disappeared, many remaining only as memorials to a lost way of life. Those few that still function are under constant assault from our own government as well as those in other parts of the world that are anxious to replace them.

For those citizens who are trapped in the cities and towns that depended on manufacturing, it has become a cold and empty existence.

Factory Town (Riding in Boxcars, 2006) is a reflection of what I saw as I visited many of these places.

Glenn K. Currie

 

Factory Town

 

Smoke from high stacks,

Is disappearing,

 Carried away by a frigid wind,

Sweeping in from the West,

Leaving

Barren horizons.

 

Night lights,

Of  homes and factories,

Burn weakly,

Their reflections

An orange blur

Against blackened snow.

 

Asian wolves,

Silently watch

From ancient woods,

Waiting for stragglers,

Too old

To keep pace.

 

Broken windows shiver

In the cold.

Fragile shelter

From invaders,

Decimating

The land.