I’ve just found out that Hugh Fox passed away on September 4th. I was in Edinburgh at the time, possibly sleeping, or drinking coffee in a castle, or staring at the Stone of Destiny. I never knew him, but I’ve got a poem in the next issue of Liebamour alongside his work, and have been putting together the first issue of Constellations, which will feature four of his poems. I’d hoped he’d have been able to see it before he went, but I suppose it wasn’t to be.

You get on a train; there’s a man sitting across from the seat you take. On a good day maybe you make eye contact once. On rare occasions perhaps the two of you exchange a word or three about the delay, or the book you’re reading. Then he gets off three stops later and is gone from your life forever, just a ripple on the surface of the water that effortlessly reclaims its stillness in a shoulder shrug.

Most days the man alighted before you even got on. There’s a fading heat signature from the plastic seat he occupied. Maybe he left his newspaper, creased in a certain way.