Alfie

Down the foggy street your lonely figure did laik,* no words no smile just waiting for your mate, knowing I, a wandering soul. Like the wind! I’d come and go, summer madness winter’s snow, recharged urchin forever all aglow. Yet! next to the corner shop your place, we all perceived your fortress, a sanctuary to hide you from the real world. Oh yes! you were the bullies delight they smacked you around, you were too afraid to fight. To see your eyes shout out in sheer terror, I had to intervene your mother never forgot! In childhood, you bore witness to all that was evil, fear begot the prisoner locked within yourself. Sometimes! I try to tell myself the fights were never real, just a fantasy of this time we invaded, a time when might was conceived as right and weakness an excuse for intimidation! Here now! I stand at your feet barely forty, and you’ve gone no doubt to a better place, your mother by my side conveys a reflection of yesteryear, Chapel Street, Back Beck our visits to the monastery for the fruit of the bee. The tears still flow she misses you so! “Yet it is so apparent here you lay in sublime rosiness, St Peter, smiles upon this place, whilst death ended life’s neurotic war.” * laik. yorkshire dialect for play © Harry J Horsman 2001