Summat Not Reet Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Words have been bothering me.
Sometime back I wrote a poem
About returning to the farm
Where I spent my growing up
Among the intricate expanses of the Cheshire Plain.

I talked of returning to the cowsheds
And stockyards that I knew as a boy
Sixty or more years ago now -
When I really meant the shippons
And stackyards of Corner Farm.

I thought that it was better
To look forward and please
The occasional new reader -
When I really wanted to talk
With the past and of what was gone.

And hearing the poem
Read by a robot Siri
In American on PoemHunter
I feel sorry for the botty lady
When she talks about ‘co -sh- edds'
As oo flummoxes the word.

I will go back and please the past -
To hell with the odd understanding.
I love the word shippon
And it needs my comfort now
That most of them have been converted
Into £500,000-plus swanky terraced housing.

The standard etymology is that
It derives from ‘sheep pen'
But I find this unsatisfactory -
Preferring derivation from
The dialect word ‘shape'
Much used to denote careful purpose.

‘Tha' mun shape up lad'
Was a common admonition
And ‘ee dunna shape up gradely'
Was a chastening criticism -
So, I am afraid that I can't let this go
And will have to straighten things.

And it makes sense that the cattle
Should have been enclosed with careful purpose -
Though animal husbandry is a thing of the past
Now that money and morality have been split
And carelessness is regarded as cost-cutting
And a necessary adjunct to profit and greed.