Swing West

(i.m. Paul Donnelly - Poet)

Paul was a good friend of mine & a fine poet. He was diagnosed with bowel cancer & had surgery - that was in an August quite some years ago. He was told to rest for a year but the college he worked for (Runshaw) had other ideas. He was told if he wasn’t back at his desk by January they would assume he’d resigned…so he went back…& a few years later was dead. When I went to see him for the last time in the hospice I gave him a small carved horse (for luck) - it was in his hand when he died…hence this poem…

Swing West (i.m. Paul Donnelly - Poet)

There is no-one in this silence

Yet as carefully you pick out

One Selected Poems, the new notebook,

Pages still blank and a pen that’s

Fully charged: you saddle up and

Swing West, the rising road before

You, the rising sun at your back.

The light is young.

The day is fresh.

And you come to a clearing

Embraced by white willows,

There’s a pool for clean water,

Sweet grass for good grazing,

So you build a slow fire,

Cook bacon and beans.

You know there’s no hurry

So sipping cold beer

You’ll let the words be.