Colin

A man of few words

and no vices

unless you count watching three lots of news every evening a vice

And muting the sports news.

He’d ‘defrocked’ himself, he said,

to not be tempted to prescribe

medicine beyond his knowledge

as he grew old.

Reserved by nature

yet he’d taken to the stage

in Gilbert and Sullivans.

In his later years he found his place

in choirs –

I watched the performance of

The Armed Man,

moving beyond words

but my tears were for the pride

I saw on his face

as he saw me watching him.

He’d bike through the park

to his other place, the Noosa Theatre,

where he was forever a Kiwi number 8 wirer.

There is no summing up of 88 years

or even the 60 I knew him for

But who will hear the lorikeets?

Who will mourn the mango tree?

Who will watch the pelicans land?

And who will eat all the dahl now?