On Seeing an Old, Old Friend as One Plague Ebbs and Another Progresses

Issue 16

He came to the restaurant
with his 36 year old daughter
who I said looked radiant
in her first-time pregnancy.
 
We were eating outside
that rare summer day that
smelled more of heaven
than earth and my wife
and I had got there first...
so I had prepared myself
for meeting my friend
of half a century after
almost two years and
two major operations
on his part (a triple
by-pass and prostate
cancer as he neared
the ninth decade--
I almost wondered
if he was showing off,
a Superman of old age).
 
Still, my heart creaked
a bit when I saw old Gus
and young Kate coming
to our table: he was smaller,
slower, less exact in stature
and speaking and I had to
strain to hear him even
though he sat close to me
but none of that mattered
for a miracle happened--
the subtle but resolute
miracle found in the
bones of liking, the bones
of friendship and the
unbreakable bones of love
as all those months since
two old men last hugged
had vanished as though
we had dreamt that lost
time and now we were
once again awake….

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Nolo Segundo, pen name of a retired teacher from America, Japan, Cambodia, the war zone of Cambodia, 1973-74, in his 8th decade, became published in some 260 literary journals in 21 countries and 3 poetry collections published by Cyberwit.net: THE ENORMITY OF EXISTENCE; OF ETHER AND EARTH; and SOUL SONGS. These titles reflect awareness gained when he had an NDE whilst nearly drowning in 1971: of a consciousness predating birth and surviving death, what poets since Plato have called the soul. 

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