Thanks Max identified with this I had have dreams lately of old friends who
are gone -they seem so alive when I wake up it is scary
P old dreamer
Ps googled him got 102,00 hits who knows??
Once a friend of mine suddenly took off 1970???? Left me with all his
premium bonds -he I cannot trace -he might be a millionaire winner (they
won't tell me if he has won!!
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 19 January 2010 19:30
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Snap: Classmate Bill
Classmate Bill
Woke up just now having dreamed
not of our old dog that died last week
full of cancer, full of years,
but of Bill Burslem! last seen
1953 or 4 -
same class at our boys' high school
pretentiously misnamed 'grammar'.
Bill was dark, muttering, slouched,
his hands inky, his writing the bane
of all the masters. 'Burslem!
write it out again, cleanly!'
Beyond him. He drew down on himself
the anger ready in all our teachers,
deflecting it from us.
Oh, he was bright, I felt - something
obscure made him a wreck.
Nowadays he'd be treated,
protected. In the fifties
I saw no such thing occur.
He vanished from school a while,
came back, vanished.
The Burslem in my dream was suave,
smiling, in a long black coat
as worn by statesmen on the news
in winter. And a black homburg.
The Burslem who biked to my house
one day sat at our kitchen table
his teaspoon trembling noisily
against his teacup, his eye hard
to meet, conversation stilted.
I wanted to befriend him - failed.
Fifty-five years on, my dream of him
seems to say he bears no grudge.
With his bitten nails and shivering,
no way he could have lived so long as me,
full of years, full of memories.
20 January 2010
Max Richards
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