Residual — Summary

Thirty years after the sudden death of someone I didn’t know terribly well, what remains? Not his name. Not quite his face, but something of his posture and physique. A strong impression of good-natured and thoughtful conviviality, based on possibly no more than half a dozen conversations, always on the periphery of punk shows. The shock and sadness of his death from a brain tumor. Someone who, on rare occasions when he pops into my head, still makes me smile, and shapes my memory of that whole period in my life. Good times. A good dude.

Wish I remembered his name.

fledgling cuckoo flopping across the road

adoptive parents nowhere to be found

poor little rain-crow didn’t mean to be a parasite

opening my umbrella I spook a bear

in the depths of the hollow widely spaced raindrops

water still gurgling under the rocks

and the crashing of something big in black velvet

upslope through woodferns and storm-downed timber

a distant cuckoo singing who are you you you

I know a lullaby when I hear one