My heart throbs with the news that hospice has come to him,
and it awakens me to what it can mean to know a person for a short time
a long time ago
and find that they are beautiful in your memory
like a handful of perfect days
or that night you saw Miles Davis with the rest of the City
or that solar eclipse when you stood fixed
while the sky grew dark in the middle of the afternoon.
I see Joe that way,
sitting on a barstool, being my friend
listening to me and sharing with his whole self
in my living room, eating dinner
across the table at some restaurant on the North Side.
Was it Jim’s Grill or the Indian place?
Was he wearing a brown leather jacket?
It’s odd what I have forgotten,
it could fill an urn or ten.
Yet him I remember
solid as a diner mug
his warm wicked smile set beneath sad and sparkly eyes
mind razor sharp, heart armored, yet bruised and beating
for all the wrongs in the world
all the left behinds and left outs
making me laugh, making me think, making me love him
the way you love a shooting star or a rainbow
briefly and beyond you.
It’s just a snapshot I have of him
a collage, really, of moments
that mattered so much then
and now for how they helped make me
even though that image has been buried by decades
of lives we went on to live
when our paths diverged.
Some things time doesn’t diminish
no matter how ephemeral
like seeing a saguaro blossom
that you know lasts only a day
or a friend you held close
when time stretched out like a skinny sleeping dog.
precious not only because they are fleeting
but because they were part of your life at all
and made you more for it.
