Bent double, like a closing book.
A frail grey shadow of something great yet now forever lost.
I could not look upon you.
I could not find the love I had to strengthen me.
You were gone.
Now in the early hours I mourn you.
Tears now, only tears.
The words you wrote through my pain,
Add only more weight to this emptiness.
And the photographs and film, the echoes of your life,
Fades from my memory like my childhood.
I miss you.
Yet sometimes when I’m alone I know you are here.
With a strong hand upon my shoulder and fragments of
Keats, Wordsworth and Wileman for my ear.
I loved you for all you ever were.
I love you for all you will make me be.
But most of all I miss you, Albert.
(For my Grandfather: Albert Wileman)
