We welcome back recent guest Andy N who invites us to use a bit of nostalgia in today’s Napowrimo prompt.
Homage to Bagpuss in Hove
Was it the third or fourth night, Sarah?
during that month, we lived in Hove
when my agent paid for us both to
move there temporarily,
that second summer, we were together,
and we stumbled onto that singer
playing alone beside the coastline
at the start of dusk.
Do you remember him asking, Sarah?
pausing in between songs
can either of us play an autoharp
or a mandolin
at the edge of the beach
a cup of hot chocolate
barely keeping
his aged fingers warm.
I’d grown up watching it like you
although I couldn’t begin
to name any of the songs
he played one after the other,
rather the names of Bagpuss’s friends
from Professor Yaffle to
The Mice on the mouse-organ
to Gabriel the Toad and Madeleine
.
I see the singer’s face even now
harmonica in his mouth
playing a melody of Song of the Flea
and Charliemouse Weaving
before eventually finishing with
the bony king of nowhere
opening up the curtain
to an unexpected love.
You didn’t get it, I should have seen
in the ash-coloured light
finding the nostalgia too strange
pausing for a few minutes
as if you were listening to something else
before hurrying on as before
underlining the differences between us both
that I only realised after you had gone.
Andy N
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