Tuesday 2 August 2022

Drifting Away

 


I feel like a Yank
Returning to this rugged
Remoteness

Her face in repose
Utterly unfamiliar

In death 

It is her voice
That remains

The bright kindliness
With which she used
To speak my name

Summoning summer days
Of another time

Young men

Fishing
Fast driving
Effortless friendship

I remember

David diving
Into the bottle-green
Calm of the deep

To retrieve the oar
That had slipped

Drifting away
Like a prophecy

Coming back
To the shallow shore
And the dying

Out of our friendship

I still don’t know
How we became
Such strangers

I think of him now
Pray for him sleeping 
Slipping away

Far away from here

The innocent bed
We shared back then
In the way that young friends did

As close in soul
As in body
The tender warmth
Of it

The beauty

And though it is lost
It is a history
That abides within my soul

Treasured