Zoe                                                    6\13

There was coffee
and few words.

The bill was split;
you insisted.

On the sunlit street,
you walked away.

- Quentin Hogge
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Nineteen sixty one –  school daze -  Fairlawn

Psalm 121

I lift mine eyes unto the hills – good idea,
beautiful, inspiring, purifying. Always loved mountains.
Then a moleheap memory spoils the view.
(towering, beefy, sadistic housemaster – I shall not beat
you. Instead learn Psalm 121 and recite it tomorrow
-  then, I’ll beat you -)
From whence cometh my help.
Oh good – I’m going to need help.
My help cometh from the Lord; so He must
be up there, in the hills.

That’s where the journey started.
Not the pain, it was the waiting,
knowing indistinctly
at nine years old it was not
possible to memorize religious text.
Knowing instinctively
that the sight of him would tie the tongue,
dry the throat and all concentration would focus
on not losing the bowels.
So, Lord, maker of heaven, earth
and that Dickensian bully, now, now
I know the psalm, fifty years on, and he is dead.
My foot has stumbled,
often missed the bridle-path;
sorry to wake you, Keeper,
I am humbly grateful that you kept the chasm
shallow, the pain so fleeting, the scars so small,
neither the sun by night nor the moon by day
reveal them.
Keep my going out and my coming in -
for memory is from this time forth and
now.

- Quentin Hogge