A painted window touched by an old city streetlight, we wandered in obscurity looking for hope, we slept on cold church steps hungry and unseen.
The world belonged to someone else,
pigeons and seagulls woke us in the dull morning of a 1969 Bristol.
Your kind eyes still haunt my waking thoughts; your orphan hopes still cut me. Deep in the wilderness of our mute helplessness, where tears have no place, something lived inside us. The warm tea that we begged off the lady at the railway station canteen sustained our goodbyes, but you Nigel, only had my friendship to comfort you, and it was ripped away as I waved you goodbye on that September day on Bristol station. What is left now but a torn asylum aching and masses of memorised flowers?
For Nigel Walker
Passed on 2017. (Birthday unknown)