A Poem for Gaz of Fingerprints Cafe

Four years ago Gareth Carnall, owner of Fingerprints cafe in Leicester, was suddenly and tragically killed in a head-on collision.  I wrote about his funeral in this blog post:

https://lizardyoga.wordpress.com/2014/07/29/the-fingerprints-of-life-gazs-funeral/

and now I’ve written a poem for him:

Fingerprints

 

A car crash on a lonely lane

left Fingerprints of loss

witness the neighbourhood remain

for the cortege to cross;

the slow procession, nothing rushed

the street from end to end was hushed.

 

It caught my throat: I hadn’t thought

to feel so much for one

I’d known so little: yet it taught

that when a life is run

we walk so slowly to the grave

as if to make the time our slave

 

For death came quick: head-on collision

in the early dawn

a crash nobody could envision

nor expect to mourn

his flag of life as yet unfurled,

no time to vanish from the world

 

I can’t imagine how it feels

to those who knew him best

the sudden smash of blackness reels

and rocks within the chest

a host all silent in the road

shared common grief as life was slowed.

 

For Gaz left prints of memory

upon the local scene

this heartbeat of community,

the bench outside still green;

forgetting would be travesty

so, fingering the melody

here we sing our threnody –

remember this his legacy.

 

Sarada Gray, 2018

Kirk out