Page 47 of Persuading Penny

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The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

I’d been the one to introduce him to the poem. We’d been sitting on a bench in a quiet park. On seeing a grasshopper, I’d begun to recite the poem.

It’d quickly become our little secret poem...citing a line here and there whenever we came across a grasshopper or cricket.

And now, it was his alone...or was he perhaps sharing my beloved poem with someone else? With Bridget?

He finished the poem, took a humble bow as applause filled the room. After a beat, he cleared his throat and began again:

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd

A host, of golden daffodils

Beside the lake, beneath the trees

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

I smiled. For some reason this particular poem always made us smile, even laugh at times. There was something in the phrasing, the choice of words that never failed to amuse us.

Or perhaps it was simply the way Cliff always read it, with that intonation...

The very same intonation he used now.

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude

And then my heart with pleasure fills

And dances with the daffodils.

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Apart of me wantedto stand up and walk out. The pain of those raw emotions was so hard to bear. But of course, I wanted to stay; stay and hear him, see him and remember all those times.

He’d cited Emily Dickinson the very first time we met.After a brief walk just outside Tel Aviv, we’d sat beneath a tree with a mass of dazzling stars sprinkled across the night sky.

But just as the moment grew quiet and romantic, a fly buzzed around our heads, as if to deliberately ruin the moment.

And he’d said;

I heard a fly buzz when I died;

The stillness round my form

Was like the stillness in the air

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