Corrugated walls

Corrugated walls, rusting nails,  
doorless, windowless cold and chill  
as any Christmas Day in December.  
Was he a woods man or tending  
the smoulder of charcoal beneath  
a lid of sods, a manger for his  
being many years ago?  
 
Felix-of-the-street,  
pram and tyreless wheels,  
follows me since childhood days.  
A herring-bone-coat fraying  
with sun and rain and snow.  
Was the wilderness the same read  
at Sunday school? Your eyes were blue  
and long your hair and grey,  
you left a manger derelict, sad,  
iron corrugations in the wood,  
a wood I call my own  
to share with a dog called Jack.  
Have you gone to the wild-ness  
of the wilderness, sand and sun.  
Elijah and I did not know?  
Cardboard  case and shuffle-shoes,  
were they your Cross?  
Wrote of you many times ago,  
memories each day  
feel your presence.  
 
Old man, long called Felix  
so long it seems so long.  
Was that your name?  
Must not say goodbye.  
Where shall we meet? . . . .  
The wild-ness of the wilderness,  
space and time, time and space  
questions asked and answered.