I did not think to write an elegy for you
a friend whom I'd not seen for forty years, until a boy passed by with sun-burnt skin and from the sky a lark spilt notes of rain.
Then I remembered one hot summer day when we played cricket in long meadow grass, where cows stood watching every eager run you notched in chalk upon your mellow blade.
I bowled for hours, shirt off, and unaware of how the heat was blistering my back, whilst you hit out, reluctant to declare until you'd equalled Bradman's highest knock.
Then when my innings came I had the luck to be distracted by a lark that rose as your late-swinger hit my middle stump. I claimed 'no ball' but you'd hear none of that.
The hurt was worse than any peeling skin and lasted for a month, or maybe more. And so we parted company, still friends, but never to recall our epic match.
Now houses crouch like fielders in the slips, the grass is gone and there's no room to bat; and you, I hear, at sixty have been caught whilst I, amazingly, am still not out.
That place, those hours, the summer I thought lost, were all brought back because a boy passed by stripped to the waist and, from a heap of stones, a new bird rose to haunt an empty sky.
Edward Storey
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