Not Quite an Hour

Not Quite an Hour

(“When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come, everything is now ready.’” Luke 16:17)

I had hoped to find you there, maybe in a corner, sitting with no one,
and catching up on every done, every right and wrong. We would
laugh at our serious adolescence, condole upon our misshapen dreams,
wonder at wisdom that left our coffee bitter,
some friendships, and some others, that started to the letter and
ended not answering the phone.

You would tell me of your husband’s passing, the one love you found
that took all of you, the full of you, and befriended the broken heart
you had finally come to understand. But he was older, 15 years or more;
but he was stronger than the teenage crushes, more settled than
the bad boys who usher in adulthood like a customized playground.

It would be not quite an hour of soft words, and the first tear forms.
The water rest, a captured bubble, filling in your lower eyelid, and
like me, like you, like many others, you do not blink, for as soon
as you do,
it will break the surface tension with the heavy tear dropping from
the icicle warming and settling like a mountaineer upon the crest of
your cheek; the frame of a face that denies forgetting.

I would mention my loves, remember time in 80 or 81 we
heard Terry Talbot sing his ballads to Jesus. You never flushed
nor squirmed and even joined our hands as pray floated from
the gymnasium floor to the ear of the Father. And, perhaps
a God who calls himself Father was the chief hurdle for your faith.

All I know, you were always gracious when at 19 I opened a
can of “Four Spiritual Laws” and spoon-fed it to you without any
thought of even heating it up.

But here we are, and I hope, when the dinner bell is rung, we might
meet you again, we might laugh as silly old friends, mention our
upcoming hip replacements and European vacations; and, with

30 years since placing eyes on each other, 20 years since hearing
as voice,
we might be content to skim the surface, yet comfortable to
open the curtain of our backstage lives, with nothing to lose
and so little time.

Meet me at the banquet, sit beside me at the table,
I expect to have a day full of errands,
but would rather break bread with a friend.