One Man on a Bummel

For a big man, he was good
at vanishing – his Cheshire Cat act.
He’d hide behind small, round spectacles,
majestically tactful.

Tracking him down often felt
like a treasure hunt. The golden spoon,
found glinting on the ground one winter’s
day in Matlock Spa, was a sign –

or so we supposed, baffled
at his absence, shut out of the holiday flat
he’d hired to share, and looking for the key.
He’d gone off on a jaunt, or a ‘bummel’.

That word he returned to me,
new, once he’d finished the book
I gave (unread) as a birthday gift,
the classic by Jerome K. Jerome.

I’d thought it meant a three-seater cycle.
He corrected me kindly, but with a relish
for truth equal to his love of sweet food,
the maple syrup he brought on Shrove Tuesday

to pour on our pancakes. It lasted
into November, one week after
he died. Odd that I have the spoon,
but no syrup, now, to fill it.

Lucy Lewis
29 December 2004