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My Prince, my most charming Prince, 'The Daffodils' is written on a small elongated and plasticized card that I have been using as a bookmark for at least the last 30 years.

The rest of your post is something that I will copy and keep as long as I live.

When I was a lad of 9-years old (1954), one Saturday morning in early december, a friend of mine, Jean-Pierre, 8-years old, and I were foolish enough to go onto the thin ice of Bathurst Harbour.

I fell through the ice first into the most glacial water I had ever felt, and managed somehow to regain the surface although my heavy winter clothes were drenched and weighing me down.

Jean-Pierre was too young to understand the gravity of the situation and I will forever see his laughing face as he leaned over to give me a hand. Our hands had barely touched when the ice gave way beneath him.

As I clung to the edge of the broken ice, I could see him sinking without the least impression on his face and without any struggle to regain the surface. I shouted to him to kick his feet and to move his arms but he gradually sank out of sight, and the current took him out into the Bay of Chaleur because the tide was going out at the time.

I send a Christmas card every year to the man who pulled me out of the water and I place a plastic poinsetta on Jean-Pierre's gravestone on December 4th.

I blamed myself for his death all through my teenage years and beyond. In those days, and in little communities like this one, therapy was unheard of, and the policy at home as well as at school was to 'Not say a word about it, he'll get over it).

I was not even given a chance to cry. I was in a coma for three days because of the effects of hypothermia, and when I woke up, I heard a nursing nun saying: 'Poor thing.' I looked at her and asked: 'Where's Jean-Pierre?' She repeated :'Poor thing.' and walked away from me.

Hours later my father, stinking of rhum and tobacco as usual, came to tell me that Jean-Pierre's body had been recovered from the bay and that he was already burried.

Whenever I speak about it, as I am doing now, it feels like a raging storm is unfolding in my chest.

Years later, when I had the courage to go to the library and to look up the edition of our weekly newspaper which covered the accident, I saw both our school pictures on the front page. The article stated that an autopsy had revealed that there was not a drop of water in Jean-Pierre's lungs. He died instantly of shock when he dropped into the glacial waters. His heart stopped all at once. I then understood why he had sunk so motionlessly; he was already dead.

The eulogy for your friend is something I have been waiting a lifetime to hear.

Thank you so much, mon cher Brian.

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Right on, my man, right on!

Heterosexuals may have never heard of Jane Rule, Aphra Behn or even George Sand, but they will not be able to ignore this incredibly talented poetess, Carol Ann Duffy as Poet Laureate of the UK.

Frankly, I am surprised by what appears to be a rather blasé attitude coming from some women on this thread.

But judging from some of the previous poets who have accpted this honor, I can understanding their wondering what all the fuss is about.

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Fantastic . . .

Now that we have gone mainstream, heterosexuals now have no excuse to neglect the creativity and profound wisodom that can be borne of same-sex love,

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From Sappho to George Sand to Jane Rule to Margaret Atwood.. and now Carol Ann Duffy as Poet Laureat of Great Britain!

Stop grizzling and rejoice! Do you have any idea how much work and inner turmoil goes into being a poet? Send her a card, or a some flowers or even a bottle of bubbly, but please, don't grizzle.

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Isn't the fact that Carol is the first woman Poet Laureate more fundamental than her sexual orientation?

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