I walk beside you: tall, stooped,
a quintessentially English presence. 
Listen to those flat Fenland vowels
swirl into melodies,
meld with the staccato RP of Cambridge.

So many minor key explorations of sadness;
pull at the scabs of loneliness and regret.
Your songs made plangent
by the melancholic timbre of your voice.

Your abiding mood was irresolution,
the secret cross you bore, regret.
You never lost your fragility of heart.
My emptiness of soul filled,
at least passingly, by gentle,
observational lyrics that
lift your songs into poems.
Poems that continue to break my heart.
And that’s my mea cula.