Piercing unaccompanied voice.
A sad-faced man in close-up
in a movie seen on TV, some years
after it was made. And after I'd learned,
close up, what ‘Stir Crazy’ could mean.
Send it by mail … And we did.
All the letters eventually burned,
but I can still quote them … still
hear your voice in my head. Speaking,
not singing. Lifting off the page.
Put your arms ’round me,
give my heart ease. Something
to dream of, if you’d been free.
Roses love sunshine. You wrote me
poems full of roses: and in one letter
a small pressed flower, called
hearts-ease. A half-joking scrawl
in the margin, ‘Well, I din’t ’ave
no roses.’ Angels in heaven
know I love you. All my life long,
any time, without warning,
a sweet-sounding folksong –
plaintive, haunting – in that movie clip,
or in the voice of Burl Ives, or
Glenn Campbell, or Johnny Cash …
or your voice, or mine. Plunging me
instantly, again, down in the valley,
the valley so low. Where a dead man
waits in remembrance. (Send it
in care of the Birmingham Jail.)
It surprised me that my final poem this April would turn out to be this. I guess something still needed expression. The back story is in my memoir Breaking Into Pentridge Prison: Memories of Darkness and Light, published in paperback 2023 and available from Pentridge Prison Inside Out. To be made available on Amazon as an ebook in 2025.
(This video from the movie begins with the end of another song before going into 'Down in the Valley'):