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
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