Just a wave upon the sand?

What do you do when someone you didn't know, but yet you did, dies?

One of my four current favorite authors, in whose books I've dwelt in for hours and days on end, passed.

I was following his blog and saw he was ill. The C word. Plus early pre-vax Covid. I waited for new books. Like e selfish child who expects papa to play on his deathbed. 

I guess you can't write much when you are sick.

Then I got ill and busy with other series. Like a friend you lose track of (Forget) while making new. 

Then I found the last book I'd been too cheap to buy, at the library. And I checked his blog and he was dead. 

He was funny. He cared about pandemics and comics and London. and people who suffered in pandemics. Kept us posted on Covid in London. 

I feel that somehow, his detectives Bryant & May (not the matches which I guess were a brand in England) should honor their creators passing. 

Like Holmes and Poirot, Alleyn.and Wimsey, Arthur Bryant and John May must have a life beyond their writers. 

I wish I could have sent a tribute to the funeral. Or told his husband I was sorry. And thank you for it all. 

For the underground rivers and Carnaby Street and Mr. Punch and old St Pancras and the Peculiar Crimes Unit, which should have existed, thanks. 

Someday I will get to London. And most of the quirky bits, and much of the important will have come from Bryant and May and Meera and Janice and Raymond and Crippen and Fowler. 

Eternal rest, Christopher Fowler (1953-2023, in the 69 club with Bowie and Rickman and Petty)

Campfire music and lightning bugs or fireflies

 (part two on my ode to the humble, yet gestalt campfire)

Busy, buzzy, ringy-dinging

shouting, scolding, swearing, slinging

Bashing, dashing, banging, crashing

Rushing feet and teeth gnashing 

What a weird, wild wacky

wonky, work-a-day world: 

the horror show called grownup

Where everyone races but no one wins

Mr. Grinch was framed

It wasn't Christmas he minded 

But the NOISE NOISE NOISE

Assaulting ears and peace of mind 

Come away from the roar

the gardinkers and Tom-tookers

the hustle and hassle

the tussle and worry-hurry

Come to the big lake

on a Michigan summer night

hear soft smooth soul fixing sounds

of earth and wind and fire

Campfire kindling trackle, crackles

Birch wood sizzle-hissle whistles

Swallows singing swan songs

Wakey bats echolocating bugs

sensual sklush of lake-surf surge

Sklish-swish, moan-groan wind

Nearing thunder crumble crunching

Misty, moisty crickle-trickle rain 

And we by the campfire sit

Loathe to go in and end the night

Companionably conversing 

on nothing and everything

Where the most stressful 

topic for evening discussion

is whether they are called

lightning bugs or fireflies

Of campfires and marshmallows on a Michigan summer night

Michigan midsummer's eve

Of campfires and pine smoke

And flimsy folding chairs 

Dad rescued from a junk pile

Roasting marshmallow on branches

because mom is too cheap 

to spring for sticks or metal forks

Spiky, unsanitary and single use

But good for mass toasting

and beating of brothers 

and launching fiery sticky projectiles

for no particular reason

Wielding flaming marshmallow torches

Like maniacal villagers raising hue and cry

scaring shrieking little siblings

and getting scolded for waste

On toasting styles, to plunge or not to plunge?

coveting Grama's patient golden perfection

but usually too lazy to slow roast

incinerating in one fell swoop

Burning fingers and tongue

on ash-dropped incendiaries

Never knowing which is best

Blackened crunchy shell or gooey white innards

On recipes, S'mores sometimes

just marshmallows mostly

mom is also too cheap for

whole dollar Hershey bars

Stubborn marshmallow prints on hands

resist scrub, remain till Sunday morning

Surreptitiously sucking fingers in church, 

Reveling in campfire Saturday night 

Epilogue:

The poet lacks the lexicon

to convey just how magnificent 

the universe of memories made 

on a Michigan campfire night