It's just 58 days, since your friend Maurice Francis Baker, sailed away
To embrace his maker, now on this morning dawn of mourning
Your daughter called while the sun was pouring its rays over the glades
Of your small garden, you will no longer walk in those shades.

My dear grandfather, our last conversation was based on the trace
Of infinite constellations, the stars whose dimensions when mentioned
Had you lost in amazement, gazing at the dark nights from your arm chair
My heart's prayer is that you find those stars and start there,
For your next journey.

Over open pages of your favourite naval ships and fighter jets,
You would rest your eye on mine and inquire are you a writer yet?
Now I regret that I had kept meaning to call, never dreaming you'd fall
Into sleep deep enough never to be recalled on Easter Sunday.

So our Goodbye I'd write on Monday, through the words
That were pinned to your kitchen fridge like a badge of honour
Your grandsons song of undying love and respect,
My mother just left, closing the door quietly and stepped towards the sea
To watch the waves on your favourite beach of the place
Where you bathed in the peace of a small harbour, tasting the breeze
Salt flicked over rowing boats, farmers sowing oats on the steep
Fields by the coasts, you would sit by the small port cafe on the pier
And peer back over the years that led you here.

An orphan boy who formed his joy from books and stories,
And all these you recall, nearly a century later - last night
While you were still alive, I sat with a blank page and planned
The story of your life, to show you one day that yes I was a writer,
And my story was your story for you sat before me and I saw
Life lines and rhymes shining from the lines of your features,
Weathered by the reaches of time's hands, I held your palms
In mine, and felt the strength of memory and experience,
Pulse jumping with the richest tales, of the ships you sailed,
And the first time you beheld a whale whose fins when flailed
Were heavy enough to tip the scales, and turn your boat
So the ocean would you would pitch in pails from the deck
The motion of commotion, I picture well. These are the stories
I'd wished to tell, but I wished more that you knew that I loved you.

For I never once told you.

Now I have no grandfathers, but I know though you believe in no afterlife,
When those stars flash their lights like passing flights in the night,
I will see your face. And laugh at the sight of your thick glasses.
From behind which you saw the world change and still kept pace,
Walking with a small cane, over the Yorkshire lanes - tap-tap-tap

You are not far, for you will live between these margins,
You live inside these written words, so I will still see
You in the kitchen, waiting for me to arrive, eyes trained on the window
In those days we would talk till the fire burned low and those eyes closed
For the last time.

I miss you. And it's been seven hours, in heaven's showers
Of pain that rain I now know to never cower and forever tower
Over grief, for it was you that would teach a young boy of five to be strong.

And now from the world you rise to those skies, once again
To find your beloved wife, and live another life. So fly from land farther
Safe journey, my beloved grandfather.