Years after
you'd been the bluff neighbour,
I encountered you
in a Geelong café.
I’d just done a prison visit,
a poetry workshop.
You said you could tell
I’d been somewhere very sad.
You were sad yourself —
marriage broken, job lost —
but you’d found
certain compensations:
a singing talent
finally expressed,
and psychic gifts.
You became my friend,
my teacher:
a great magician
I understood after you died.
[Poem #6]
This began as a game some bloggers played in 2008, to write about people who'd made an impact, in the same number of words as one's age, every day for a year. I did them less often and went on longer, adding one word each birthday. I stopped in 2016 and incorporated them into my main poetry blog. In 2019 I resumed the project and gave it its own blog again, with a new name, where it may unfold at its own (slow, intermittent) pace. I've labelled these verse portraits, but they're more like quick sketches: mere glimpses, impressions....
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