A Meeting

    
This poem is a postscript to the poem 'Felix' which I wrote many years ago. Felix was a tramp.  
   
   
Corrugated walls and rusting nails    
doorless, windowless cold and chill    
as any Christmas Day in December.    
Was he a woods man 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,    
following 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,    
the wood I call my own    
to share with a dog called Jack.    
   
Have you gone to the wildness    
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, to    
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 wildness of the wilderness,?  
Have you still your cardboard case ?
Me ? What have I ? Memories Felix
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Memories memories   ...  memor   ...   ...  
ies   ...   ...