Union Songs

The Pick-up Shed

A song by Merv Lilley©Merv Lilley 1962
Music by Bill Berry

Thin wire man with a gladstone bag,
You're typical down by the sea,
You with the face and the form of the land,
And the hardness of industry.

In the timeless swing of your legs and arms
You carry the nameless grace,
The ships and the seas and the cities live
In the rutted grooves of your face.

I thought that my words might wither and die
As cactus from desert sand,
But I gain the sweep of an eager pen
When I stand in your careless band.

And I feel, yes I feel like a homebound gull
Blown far from its own sea-lane,
When I come back to the pick-up shed,
And the gull comes home again.

Notes

Many thanks to Merv Lilley for permission to add this song to the Union Songs collection. It was published in What About The People a collection of poems by Dorothy Hewett and Merv Lilley published by the National Council of the Realist Writers in 1962

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union songs..........a selection by mark gregory