• Artist: Anne Boileau
• Title: Pete's Forge
• Length: 1:41 minutes (1.54 MB)
• Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

Pete’s Forge Copyright © 2009 Anne Boileau

Pete’s life kick-stopped.
His hearse
a fourteen hundred cc trike,
the priest a biking Rev.

His mourners men in leather,
tattoos, rhinestones, tasselled sleeves;
the cavalcade growls up and roars
six miles down startled avenues
to Lawnswood Cemetery in Leeds.

Here they stand,
a pride of ageing lions,
bare-headed beside their clicking machines.
Hell’s Angels at the gate.

Stories we hear about this man.
Plantagenet face, a modern knight,
who loved his horse-mad, dog-mad wife,
travelled the world with her.

His anger shot with tenderness,
who made mistakes and paid for them.
Did time.
Who stopped to mend a car
stranded on a Scottish pass;
who loved India, helped build a school;
who beat hot metal into shapes
and forged bright laughter out of grief.

And now he moves strong men to tears.
Pete’s life a furnace, still casting heat
after the bellows ceased to blow.