North Star for Bob Kaye

You may have always been 
my North Star, star of the north,
you were perhaps always the source 
of salvation for me, perhaps,
even as your hands turned a table 
from junk to a witness of lives not yet lived
or raised from your earth, beauty and truth
your house became the fixed point 
for a constellation of friends
when you found the missing pieces of you
which became the missing pieces of me

You are an organising thought
you are a mystery of means
you are the hands and the book 
perhaps, or as close as it gets 
the pages the verse, ellipsis precision, 
the wondering why and the answer always left
in the mouths of the children whose children you trust
with the echoes of god if that's what we must 
call knowledge, I think we must.

You are a witness to generations
you wear your frailties well
your strength is a loom
And your song is a bell
calling us in truth back to the place 
we would be lost without; 
nothing less than the heart of us
though sometimes a spinning compass,
and always a grateful amazed love of a man

This family will rock and it will roll
to the maths in the music
the gaps in the theory
the family chosen
and the light that you give.