[David Callin]

Fifteen years on
from that melancholy weekend,
the muted celebration
of your fiftieth birthday
when fifty-one
was not on the agenda,
if the doctors were not wrong,
I am laid low
by the memory of this song
or that
that led us on
through our teenage years,
Dylan’s soulful drone,
the mysteries of Astral Weeks,
the joyous explosion
of sound and speed
that started Born To Run ,
the healing lucubrations
of the saxophone
on Backstreets,
its fat and tender tone,
and then
that one
by Hall and Oates you liked,
She’s Gone.