The inference of days

by Clare Holtham 16/09/08

In memoriam AFPR, Cambridge

I think of you in your study
above the garage
puffing gently on a pipe,
surrounded by flotsam
and jetsam, Fribourg and Treyer
snuff tins, piles of papers
and books: your castle
against the wind
and the rain;

or out In it,
Shep’s chain round your neck,
Shep running free
across the ploughed land
that skirts Nine Wells Wood,
you stooping
over an old clay pipe
or a coprolite.

Spring mornings,
the bees venturing
from the hive,
the white doves
crooning to their squabs
under the window,
the cherry blossom
fluttering to earth,
so, lightly;
you smiling gently
at the theory of indistinguishables.

Autumn days
when you led us all
on a fungus foray,
deep in woods,
hunting the beefsteak
and the boletus, half
hidden among leaf litter.
Later, Damaris would fry them up,
sharing our supper
with Tom the tramp -
his bicycle propped
against the hedge.

Summer nights,
when you and she would
sleep in the garden,
closer to Gaia -
the shed being much like
that other shed where you went to work
grappling with galaxies
and tongues.

In windy weather,
you’d join with the other
Epiphany philosophers
under a wide sky,
and wheeling gulls
in the inevitable universe:
holed up in a windmill
in Norfolk,
tailwinded in nineteen
forty seven.

Winter evenings,
musing in front of the fire,
Shep dozing
at your feet,
you telling stories
or pondering Qabalah;
unravelling synchronicities
to tell the Friends
at meeting,
untying knots
in quantum mechanics -
trying them musically
perhaps, on the organ -
or simply following the quest
for Wholesight.