A Dying Sunflower ....

When I was 14 years old,
for some reason that I cannot remember (if I ever knew),
I had to repeat my second year in secondary school.

The class I went into was (I think now)
a class of folk no-one knew what to do with.

Except Mrs Nicol, who was our main
(and might have been only) teacher.

When I met Mrs Nicol it was like waking up
from a long dream (School) where nothing had happend.

And for the rest of my time in school
(I left at the end of the year, as soon as I was 15)
(which was what was expected of Mrs Nicol's class)
every moment that she was with us was about words.

She taught us (amongst so many other things
where she tried to help us to think: She knew,
or experienced herself, how difficult it is to belong)
Shakespeare's 72nd Sonnet.

Many years later, when I was introducing,
in a crowded noisy bar, my friend Richard Klein's
first recording, first CD, I remembered Mrs Nicol
and all that she had given me.

I drove North to Nairn to tell her
what she had meant to me.

But by then she had been dead for many years.

Here is Sonnet 72, which I am sure you know,
but which, for myself, I cannot know too often again ....

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.