Just Some Things to Tell You

Two months ago I was sitting in a CLSC

waiting for my name to be called by the nurse

who was coming every few minutes for a new patient

when suddenly your name rang out through the room,

or, rather, my name with your maiden name next to it.

It lingered, hesitantly, this unreal thing,

this newly-coined name of someone who, had she existed,

would have been an amalgam of the two of us, I guess.

I stood up, went to the nurse and explained the mistake

but she waved it away with a smile: my last name

or my mother’s – it’s all the same in their files.

Then we were together there for a brief spell,

And, among all those strangers, it was time spent well.

Here’s one more snippet I saved for you

from the flux of days which we live in,

and which we marvel and laugh at

but promptly forget. In January, your son,

the eternal joker, plunged himself heavily into

the shallows of the Dead Sea and dove to the beach,

his best man yelling ceremoniously, “The first man ever

to dive in the Dead Sea!”, and your son’s son

trudged through the sand on his little legs,

gurgling “I want to do it too!” and trying to catch up

with his father, who walked out of the sea

with his eyes closed to shower off the salt from his face.
An entirely forgettable scene -- if it weren't for

a sort of grace, which, somehow, had something
to do with you, and how things could have been.