Sort Of Half Remembered

He had returned from the funeral
of a friend, not a great acquaintance,
more a vague old familiar sort of half
remembered from a crowd of similar
faces – never too much in evidence,
neither to the fore nor either not quite
there at all. He struggled to recall when
they last talked, or even why they might
have had a cause for words together.

Nothing came. It was a bleak and bitter
picture of neglect, a feeling of despair,
an aching emptiness, like the drear and
deadened atmosphere that laid his
friend to rest.
© I.D. Carswell 2006