Joe

Joe made friends with a bold innocence

and Gallic charm that both disarmed

you and endeared him. He never once

raised his voice and went to such lengths

to make you welcome it disguised

a layer of self preservation that survived

an Algerian war and two wives,

an itinerant life and a complicated son

whom he loved from an oil platform off the

West African coast until he retired and

returned to Provence and stopped smiling.

And when we saw him for the last time,

we thought someone else had occupied his

body, until after he died and his boy cried

that the selfish bastard had contracted AIDS

and never told him until the last moment.

John H Davies

9th February 2011