John and Tuesday slipped away,
I remember well the day.
Working in the garden,
Just a few corners away,
That Tuesday.
I was planting, turning spades,
Adding compost to gaunt soil.
John wasn't in my thoughts Tuesday.
Not like today.
The garden thrives.
The splash of water
Transports memory's eye.
We sit outside The Trout,
He reads to Paul and I,
Below an Oxford sky,
Under cap and pint:
*Think where man's glory
Most begins and ends,
And say my glory was
I had such friends.
RIP John Callaghan. Master teacher and friend.
Yeats: "The Municipal Gallery Revisited."
The Trout is a pub in Oxford we frequented when we taught together.
