Archie

I picture you as a gentle bear

climbing down from your cab, your feet

find treads of steel, your one free paw

a tubular rail; the other clutches

a book to your chest, some browning creased-back

thriller, your place staked out at one corner.

Whenever you weren’t behind the wheel

you’d hurry back to pick up the plot,

on Camber Sands, at Dover Castle,

under the Bramley tree in our garden,

and there you’d be, forearms like hams, lost

in a world you could hold in one hand.

And at night I bet you dreamed

of footsteps in dark alleys,

half-seen faces oddly lit

in match-light struck by mysterious ladies,

their foreign accents, their dubious friends.

Come morning you'd be the first to rise.

I'd catch you on the landing, emerging

belly-first in Y-fronts from the bathroom,

flecks of shaving foam under each nostril,

nicks in your skin from the razor, singing

do not forsake me, oh my darling.

But for so long you’ve been rattling around

in a skin you used to fill and turning

slowly into emptiness,

for when autumn came, it stayed too long—

three seasons your stubborn leaves clung on!

only now can your long hibernation begin;

gentlest bear, you have always been

the finest bear in any wood.

© 2013 Andy Hickmott