The Space in memory of Richard Beaumond

Not quite the meadhall, the ballroom at Walcot Hall where we used to meet, car-sharing poets with cling-filmed plates for the communal lunch, but we were glad of the space, the window seats where we could sit in parenthesis, the solvitur ambulando around the lake that took us past those other solitaries, the fishermen hunched over their rods, even the bus shelter at the end of the drive where Michael would wait for a poem to pull in and take him on board. Born in the village and dancing with the Bedlams in blackface, as once you would have been wise to under the eyes of the gentry, it must have seemed a glimpse of commonwealth to bring us here, Richard, the opening of a space words could cross and re-cross, finding forms as light and as durable as the ark woven of rushes for the Midsummer Rejoicing. Here’s to the energy we sent through the room, mind swinging off mind as in Strip-the-Willow.

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