Steve Kelly: Rodborough Memories

Steve Kelly

I remember how you loved the Boulevards,

The spring-green trees, the shade of summer,

The array of autumn and the tracery of winter;

I remember how you loved to chat,

Out there in the front garden,

Pleased as Punch with all your building work;

I remember your laughs with your neighbours,

Bell and Frank and Phil and Colin and ad infinitum,

You had an old time music hall feel to your life;

I remember how you kept the home fires burning,

Tending to the wood and the hearth in the Albert,

That twinkle in your bespectacled eye;

I remember you out the back at the pub,

Fag in hand, pint by your side, rapier wit,

Flashing smile and tinkling laughter;

I remember our trips to London,

Old haunts in Highgate and Hampstead,

Literary talks in the Holly Bush;

Radical Rodborough resident,

Stroller in the lanes and across the fields,

Pondering by the waters of your beloved canal;

A baby in the Big Freeze of ‘62 to 3,

You saw the thaw of adulthood,

But we’ll miss you in the spring,

And every summer, and every autumn,

And every winter in the Boulevards,

In the pub, and in the lanes, and in the fields,

And think of you on the towpath,

By the waters, of your beloved canal.