In My Life

“There are places I’ll remember
all my life, though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I can still recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all”

Afternoons like these – wind
rattling the window as I write,
I pinpoint Oban on that ‘map
of my world’; the charity shop
when it was blowing a gale,
and the spume and the spray
battered the harbour as we
burst in, in the hope of buying
a couple of raincoats, cheap.

And summer mornings
at dawn, I’m transported
to Dürnstein and its Schloss
where we stayed to celebrate
our ‘Silver’...when we met
Oliver Tobias...Hired
a couple of bikes – rode
along the Danube – picked
ripe apricots off the trees...
the air as heavy as the fruit...
the juice dribbling down our chins.

Nor can I ever go down
to the sea, without thinking
of her, and the little brass plaque
on the pier, and that morning in May
we set her spirit free – scanning
the skies hearing the gulls cry
her name and ours; we, who wait,
patiently still, for a ship
never came in.