Category: Passages

It seemed a long time before
but couldn’t have been –
little more than a decade.
He was in his late fifties when he told me
and didn’t see seventy.
I don’t remember attention,
but there must have been.
He was vague and specific
“ if I ever get run down by a bus,
everything is in this briefcase,
it’s usually here ” – showing me where.
And,
“don’t let them forget the flag
and the bugle –
old soldiers want both.”

My father phoned,
telling me his bachelor brother had died.
“Just found dead in the farmhouse.”
heart-attack the certifying doctor said,
massive – unsurvivable – death almost instant.
“I’m not sure where everything is,
or what he wanted.”
I was able to tell him.

He was Fr then – “ Reverent … ”
we had gone to the same high school –
Catholic of course
eight or ten years senior he came back after ordination
and spoke to some of the classes.
A clergyman old boy –
the pinnacle of attainment.
The school authorities paraded him like an Olympian.
I thought him pompous, self-satisfied and supercilious
and exactly what Jesus didn’t have in mind for a priest
or
what he did have in mind when he railed against the Pharisees
and hypocrites.

A decade and a half later
on vacation, and change in vocation
“Mr ” now …. definitely him – distinctive features
and news had dribbled through from my parents
and old school friends,
about change in career.
Wife and children, secular and ordinary
he looked grounded and very happy.

Howard
a name that had ceased to be used
more than old-fashioned, a decade later
extinct.
A quiet boy in a noisy world :
tractors,
trailers,
trucks –
hard labour and strong language.

Thin and balletic
a  dancer at a shot-put meeting
or wrestling ring.
Half my age – exactly
11 and 22
perhaps symmetry grappled attention.
Ethereal
good-looking
pretty,
beautiful even.

Many years later I learned he
had the love of many
had, had many lovers
and was a poet. I shouldn’t have been surprised.