The Funeral, 20th. August 2015.

It was the smallness of the coffin that shocked me.
Could a whole life be locked away in that tight box
As if it had never happened?
The laughter - the wit - the frankness - the comments that could shatter glass? -
The sweetness - the kindness - the big fierce voice?
This was a whole world, a mini solar system, a multiplex of universes,
It was not something miniscule, irrelevant,
It was truly culture shifting.
Could all this be lost in an instant,
Dropped into the silent darkness,
Switched off ?
(The memories that should last
Confined to the fading minds
Of old and vulnerable people?)

What can I now say in public
About the girl I first met in the market,
That cold wet Liverpool morning?
(You managed to haggle the last half pence
Out of my schoolboy pocket).
And years later, in sunless Goodge Street,
Laughing like raucous street kids
We swingled a paint box of rainbows,
The punters too drunk to join in.
Then glitzed up at The Savoy,
(Just a trillion miles out of the Cavern),
You singing your Scouser heart out,
Me somewhere at the edge of the audience,
But not quite lost in the crowd.

Well yes, I suppose that is how it was all meant to be
Once the long old road had been travelled,
(The last interview tape unravelled,
The final song packed in the can).
But somehow it just seems so unfair
That your life could be crushed in an instant
In the glare of a Spanish heatwave,
The sunlight so bright on your face.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 20th. - 22nd. - 23rd. 2015.

For Cilla.