I went home to Glace Bay last week. My cousin Todd’s mom, Shirley Michalik, had just died. I paid my condolences to the family, sat on their deck and drank to her memory. I sponged up their pain.

Every so often I gazed at the October moon illuminating Stanley Street. It was then that my thoughts turned to Darren Hynes, the Syd Barrett of our Glace Bay chapter of the Dead Poets Society.

Darren used to own a collection of Dylan Thomas’s poetry on cassette. He memorized every verse. On autumn nights like these, we’d stand in MacLean’s field and he would declaim in his best faux Welsh accent poems like Thomas’s “And Death Shall Have No Dominion.”

Darren’s booming voice could be heard miles past Port Morien, halfway to Newfoundland, I swear. It still travels through time. I heard his Dylan Thomas roaring across a quarter century, rushing down the hill from the big field, sweeping over us in our sorrow.

After great suffering, Shirley is now dancing lithely with the man in the wind and the west moon.

Click and listen.