If I only had known ...

To base a lusty, loving blue-eyed hero

upon a man known mostly just by sight,

watched for from a bedroom window,

teenage-dreamed about,

imaginary conversations

(and some more)

is not (as Tom Jones would say) unusual.

But I never imagined then

that getting on for half a century later

I’d Google-find a photo of him

and discover that my hero had become

white-haired, pot-bellied,

six inches shorter ... and so old.