(i.m. Gareth Richards)
From the embankment of the Thames
by wind-ruffled waters and still Mildmay oaks
we’d watch and wait, alert to the newness of the day
for cousins’ single-mindedness and strength in boats
to emerge from a mid morning heat haze
from a stream off the Brocas, before a hopeful search
through indescribable scents in charity shop doorways
for Ben Shermans and deleted Pulp albums
incongruously nestled by Sir Christopher Wren,
suit jackets and glasses that looked like Graham Coxon’s.
I can still hear you through the dictaphone
breathing stories Jarvis could have taken on
and, before Shazam, ‘I think last night…’
was lost in broken fragments, endlessly reconstructed
before Steve Lamacq played ‘Your Ghost’ on the evening session
and we could piece it all together on Maidenhead Road.
On your dad’s bookshelves, seventies brown and mid-orange
framed the bearded head of the ‘forgotten Spurgeon.’
We were doubled up unaccountably,
or perhaps because the book was also forgotten
soon to be unforgotten, reforgotten and unreforgotten.
Now we have our sad allotted nights
in our own configurations of time and light
taking form in the mind’s private dark rooms
to imagine you on stage again in Camden,
on the deserted streets around Caledonian Road
or after trademark fried chicken in Highbury Fields.
Saying prayers on the streets of North London,
it was the individual he loved and not the group.
To a zealot’s ‘Community goes deeper than friendship’:
‘So you’re not a great friend, then.’
And he’d take the foolish things to shame the wise
as with baffling knowledge of Pokemon
tour dates became proxy wars in village halls
as Gareth’s base stats and anti-metagame
switched advantage to the weak or despised.
And he’d remember the praise, but he’d remember the slights
through long Essex days and deep Penzance quiet.
Hurt and joy combined in the eyes
but for all that wonder, he’d forgive every time.
Wilderspool Causeway 