A lesson in early childhood about the fragility of life.
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We learnt about friendship
talking as we walked to the infants’ school,
like the others I had envied in their noisy groups.
Steeping over bad luck in the pavement joints
or holding our coat collar after missteps
until a four- legged animal was seen,
or your rule – an ambulance,
which overrode mischance.
Despite our high stepping
malevolence still struck.
You never made it to the middle school,
we parted somewhere between the Co-op
and the road’s edge that afternoon
– no ambulance, just a builder’s truck,
then afterwards I walked alone.
You have been my yard-stick
to measure the relish of existence
and value its experience:
rude games with older girls,
the crass certainty of youth,
anger, frustration, intimacy,
marriage, middle merging to old age.
The ‘otherness’ of foreign travel:
the crowded bazaar in Mashad,
the rising sun at Chott el Jerid,
Costa Rica – and Montezuma’s Oropendula,
Capybara and Anaconda in Venezuela’s marshes.
Africa, Bermuda, China,
I touched my collar and brought you there,
whenever life presented wonder
you could never know
after that Wednesday misstep
sixty-four years ago.
There is another poem of Mike’s death that recalls events a few days later.
