The Flu Shot Sma’ Shot – a poem by Shaun Moore

The Flu Shot Sma’ Shot by Shaun Moore, poet laureate for Renfrewshire

Near a hundred and seventy years gone by,
how can it be relevant still?
Gone are the weavers, the corks and the looms,
gone are the very mills.
As are the coalmines that fired them,
the steelworks that built them,
and the ships that sailed all the shawls away,
industries now histories, communities broken boundaries,
does it matter, the moral of Sma’ Shot Day?
Back then the learned lesson of the Paisley Pattern,
was a people’s parable, people would do well to remember,
that any fabric, shawls or society, to keep its integrity,
needs the wee threads, to keep it hingin’ the gither,
Even the fanciest, world famed of fabrics,
with celebrated aesthetics, loved and lionised,
unravelled tae bits without the input,
of the unseen, the unrecognised,
Now the fabric of society’s unrecognisably altered,
the Paisley and pan global pattern changed,
from when isolation was something splendid,
a lifestyle choice of rulers of the waves,
Through post war pan European peacetime,
to political pandemonium, endemic
in these present pandemic days,
when the social has become the virtual
counting friendships with quick clicks,
in our post industrial age,
But through any historical stage,
through pandemic, disaster or war,
it’s been the Sma’ Folk on the front line.
The fodder who were dropped on the firing line,
now dropping food at your front door,
In truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours,
they protect, comfort and tend “The Herd” still,
aye, those whom the entitled, betrayed and belittled,
sneered at for being untrained or “unskilled”,
Some big high heid yins called it wrong, ill advisedly,
cronies caught out and called out rightly, on hypocrisy,
cash was splashed, siphoned off, sold doon the river
…..and the Sma’ Folk kept it together,
Through lockdown, the fabric of society,
did not breakdown, unravel and fray,
thanks to those extraordinary, ordinary workers,
the Sma’ Shots of the modern day.

If you enjoyed The Flu Shot Sma’ Shot, why not explore our poetry archive here? Read our interview with Shaun Moore here. Follow Shaun on Facebook.