WHAT WENT THROUGH YOUR MIND (for Gary Speed)

It is amazing how in the modern media age people you have never met become people you respect and feel that you know. Gary Speed was a soccer player that I always admired, though he never played for my team. I always hoped he would do well and in his current role as Wales manager I was delighted that he was being successful. He simply seemed a model professional and good guy in a sport bereft of such descriptions. To hear, yesterday afternoon, that he had passed away was a shock. Then to hear that he had taken his own life was even more devastating and like his closest friends I am asking why. I had written this poem some time ago and finished it while trying to deal with what it seems is the suicide of a wonderful human being. Love and prayers to his wife, children and parents. I would love a news bulletin soon that tells us that the poem has no relevance to Gary Speed's death. I will gladly change the dedication. In the meantime it is for Gary Speed.

Was there a rotted tree in your way

So you couldn’t see the forest bloom

Did the walls come suffocate your soul

And leave your spirit no more room

We don’t do what we want to

And what we don’t want to do we do

What went through your mind 

And what did your mind go through

 

We’re left with why oh why

We’ll sigh and we will cry

Oh why oh why?

 

The attainments of our achievements

Can never remove all our uncertainty

Even faith can muddy the mystery

When the moment blacks out eternity

Were you so lost in the tunnel’s darkness

That you couldn’t see the light there was

Was the cause of the pain you knew

More than the pain you knew you’d cause

 

We’re left with why oh why

We’ll sigh and we will cry

Oh why oh why?

 

The rough rope against your skin

The step up onto the stool

The knot in your spirit within

The twist and downward pull

The sway as you let go

That brief moment in between

The void we didn’t know

The soul’s silent secret scream

 

I pray when you felled the tree

That those blossoms didn’t get hit

And you lie now in the softness

Of the flowers that colour it.

Comments

[Daniel Owen]

Thank you Steve, for speaking so eloquently into a place where there is too much silence.

[Seeker]

I cannot tell you how much I love this poem; it is brilliant. Thank you!

[David]

Thanks Stocki. As someone who has stared at that rotted tree, this makes a profound and welcome change from the "he had so much to live for" twaddle...