Added on Tuesday 23 Oct 2012

I sometimes call the spirit of my never died
friend. This guy was tight with rivers. Best
mates with mountains, cuddled up to
the moon. His peacock's tail was plumed with
raconteur. Compare that circle drawn by
Michelangelo and well, you'd still be no-where near.

Some of us walk with the head down or
at funny angles; we plod through days
of wasted parklands, struggle round the sides
of awkward hills or peer gloomily by winter pools.
He in his monks robe, tweed vestments and
templar skull glided like some Victorian ghost.

With ordained medal of the opened rose he etched those
elongated notes on all who got his drift. Those songs ran through
us till like kundalini cobras, we rose from the dark baskets of
our hearts, delirious and giddy with each sky reaching song that scrubbed
and cleaned our dirty town. Songs that drove demons from haunted streets.
Songs that weaved through avenues of kempt gardens and
quiet lovers in their midnight coils.

But he left us, as the wisest often do, like bare
autumnal trees, left us, with our stark branches
to a Sean-less world. Each of us in turn, more
deeply rooted. Till one by one, our branches
came to springtime, white flowers opening at
the centre of our minds. And on each trunk,
his name, carved neatly, branded even, on
the rough grains of our knowledge.

Paul McCafferty