Two years ago
a Friday night
the phone rang
and
we were pulled from our coffees on the back patio,
sent off to the emergency room.
Waste no time.
He had
only an hour earlier
removed from his arm
the Band-Aid left from that morning.
Blood test, routine.
Results, not.
This week
we sat with coffees
on the back patio,
playing rummy
with cards found in a drawer
and laughing about the hijinks of two-year-olds
and the way guests make the house come alive
and sharing news,
how the contribution that put him over his goal
had just come in that day
and how I’d finally taken the step that had been waiting for me,
picking up where I left off
on a Friday night
two years ago.
We are celebrating stability
IN season.
* * *
Dusty
sits the little book on the corner of my dresser,
the one I had grabbed off the high shelf
in the back closet
two years ago,
selected from my stash
of blank journals received as gifts,
given to me in 2000 by one
who’d ridden long rides from campuses
and said
“You oughta write these things down,”
referring, of course, to stories past,
not those yet to come.
But there are always stories to come,
every season.
* * *
On Christmas morning
ten years ago
I opened it,
leather-bound
and too nice for me.
How tempted I was
on that day
to chide the giver
for having spent too much,
for getting me
something too nice.
It being Christmas,
I refrained
but knew
nothing I could ever think up to say
would be good enough to put in it.
* * *
Two years ago
I reached up,
ran my fingers over the spines
of the blank books
and chose it
to be my CLL Journal.
It bears witness
to things
faded already from memory
and
reminds me
of what Julia said,
that writing isn’t about thinking up.
but writing down,
IN season, if possible.
