Canterbury Male Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Unresolved mystery remains
About the stiff that no one claims
Of a late middle-age white male
Found with a glass decanter,
A wedding dress catalogue
Addressed to Mandy Martin,
A small battered suitcase,
An oyster card from Walthamstow,
And a copy of Dr Lake's magnum opus
‘Clinical Theology: A Theological and
Psychological Basis to Clinical Pastoral Care':
Which, in the author's words, advises
Those engaged in the caring professions
Dealing with the disturbed, troubled and mentally ill on:
"our inability to suffer the painful silences,
the anxious involvements,
and the reverberation of buried negativities
and helplessness within ourselves"

In his findings, the coroner
advised that this "was an incredibly unusual case'
of a person living at the edge of existence", with the
Post mortem recording cirrhosis
Possibly attributable to starvation.
Inquiries across Europe had drawn a blank
And poverty and loneliness set aside
There were only absences in explanation
Like the fact that the man had lost all his teeth -
The body having been found by a walker,
Who initially mistook it for a pile of rubbish,
In a neglected litter strewn hawthorn and briar patch
Near the junction of the A20 and the A28 -
The latter being the old Wincheap Way
Where pilgrims caught a first glimpse of the Minster
Took off their shoes and tugged on their hair shirts.
The Coroner ended by thanking the Kent Police
Commenting that "we could not have done more".