Beside bottle clusters and salad plates,
exchanging intimations of time
we’ll be spending together, here
amongst moorland and mountain,
these stories we’ll share like fables,
we’re on a last glass of rakiya.
Except, of course, that’s never “good night”.
With instruments drawn from bags and cases,
they’re tuning up for songs that speak
of other histories, other causes –
and it might be I’m remembering
glimpses of tracks and yards where lives
are routinely, uniquely led
and fed the soaring rapture of his song.