A poem that illustrates the fine lines of existence

Madron Workhouse

EXISTENTIAL COBBLERS

My great-great-great grandfather was a cobbler

In the fishing village of Newlyn, Cornwall.

His son, a stone mason, married and moved away.

Like they do…like they still do now.

First to Penzance…just two miles along the coast

And then to Camborne some fifteen miles up the A30

(Was the A30 even a thing then back in 1858?)

So, in Camborne he dies…leaving a wife and three children.

No financial assistance back then so she has to get a job

Up country…like so many Cornish widows before and after her.

She became housekeeper for a respectable gent;

By chance a master shoemaker, no mere cobbler, he.

But there was no room for her three young children,

Who were put in the workhouse in Madron, Penzance.

The story has a happy ending because the Cornish maid

Married the master shoemaker…thirty years her senior

And thankfully, brought her three children up to Settle.

That’s the place in Yorkshire, not the state of being.

I can’t help wondering…about those three children

Feeling scared and abandoned in the workhouse;

Christened as a job lot at St Maddern’s church.

What if their mother had not come back for them?

They would have lived very different lives, I’m sure

And, you know what? I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it.

©gray lightfoot