3.24

Old friends, wise in years and play

gathering us around their home table

to share a glass, a song, remembrances.

Lives well lived, in a small town that shone

in the holly covered windings

over fences and yards, cottages and

cold cabins, that in memory

become the places of forever.

He smoked his first cigarette on that porch,

threw a ball over the wall into the neighbor

yard that no longer exits, yet does in the

memory that bridges over the mere

formality of current time.

A life lived in a small place, yet wide,

joy and music in the eye, patience

and knowing in that open smile. History

memory, both malleable, mattering only

in the liveliness of the love they served.

————————