TOM KELLY

I am that boy

at 17, inadequate, uncertain, dragging cheap shoes to a job,

demanding nothing but my time. For too many years I ordered nuts, bolts,

cement, not necessarily on the same order:

feint lines filled with names and numbers.

I see myself sitting among strangers,
even though close family they are miles away.
There’s too much sock showing in short trousers,
revealing everything and still no glasses
to make anything clearer.
Hear them talking: it is so utterly lost on me.

Looking at this photo a lifetime later,
knowing the years before I see anything.

I blotted mini-ink bubbles, spreading blue-black blood.

The door beside me shivered draughts,

lasting until the harsh ceiling lights came painfully back on.

These were my days in a shirt, tired turned-up collar, battered jacket
at the Mercantile Dry Dock, Jarrow.

 I knew this was work after a month or so.

At first it was like school,

I thought it would soon pass. I was wrong.

Twenty-odd years of jobs along the river,

breaking the frost,

hands deep inside me pockets.

Don’t be sorry for him. I am not certain how he really feels.

How is he on this day in 1964? All I do know is I am that boy.

Tom Kelly is a Jarrow-born writer now living happily further up the Tyne at Blaydon. He has written many plays and musicals. His fourteenth collection of poems and prose These Are My Bounds will be published in March 2026 once again by Red Squirrel Press.

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