ObiWan

 

ObiWan

 

It’s easy, sang Dudley Moore in 10,

at least, I think it was him,

claiming, one of your better lyrics

to his co-writer, and I didn’t know -

only years later it clicked,

as Bo Derek’s beads clacked on the beach

in something of an awakening.

You know – why he kept him around –

what it was that made him happy,

Dudley followed this up with Arthur;

I remember it being a hit,

a film front-loaded with the best bit,

the rest playing out as didactic shit,

just rich to rags, rags to rich -

except for scenes with John Gielgud

and they killed him off. What next

and how do they bring him back?

Always churning out sequels - the hacks

bemoan it’s him it lacks,

Arthur 2, we’re on the rocks,

you’ve painted us into the corner,

let’s call it Obi Wan Kenobi Syndrome,

and be done with it, move on.

But I don’t come back as a ghost,

I don’t come back at all -

that’s your lot, mate. Books, films, friends,

move downstream and coalesce,

into something a little less

than the sum of their parts.

Setting store by the sun,

checking compass, tying shoes,

and run Forrest, run – towards horizons

that circle back, girdle my waist,

give me the strong taste

of a significance of moment –

but when I look again, I had forgot,

the blur, the speck, the dot.

Watching him from unsprocketed frames,

it's Obiwan and these are not the droids -

as cross valley, Dudley focuses a telescope,

framing nothing, then giving up,

just as she comes into shot,

but, by the time it all will be exposed,

the music plays, the credits roll.