Dear Friend Poem by David Harris

For The Late Maurice Callard


Dear friend it has been a long time
since I last spoke to you.
Sadly, I will never get that chance again.
You are gone now,
sitting at God’s side.

While you were here,
you were my tutor,
my surrogate father and my friend.
I remember our first meeting
so very vividly.
You headed up a class of five
and the year was 1976.
For the next 17 years or so,
you became the lifeblood of me.

I remember how you patiently
guided me through each novel that I wrote.
Proclaiming that I got better with each one.
Too bad the publishers never saw it that way.
However, you never let me get discouraged by that.
There is always the next one you would say.

You called me your good luck charm
as every class I attended
always seemed to be a good one.
I made many friends thanks to you.
Just before your health started failing
we got together and gave a night to you.
They asked me to speak about you.
I abandoned the script I had written
and just recollected the happy years that we had.

In a year or so, you were gone
with one wish left behind.
For nearly 14 years,
I carried that wish with me.
Then finally I got a chance to fulfil it
and your last wish came true.
It was paying back only a small measure
of what you had given me.

Of those five students you had in 1976
two have been granted
the success you wished on them.
One became a renown novelist
and the other a poet - me.

Dear friend you may be gone
but you are not forgotten
by me or anyone
who was touched by your generosity.

2 April 2009