When I Looked and He Was Gone

Week 13

When I Looked and He Was Gone

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1.      Who, long gone, still has a place in your memory bank?

2.      How did the separation take place? A move-away? Death? Illness? Argument and breach? Something else?

3.      What was that person’s gift to you? What was yours to her or him?

4.      Where is he or she now? Do you know? Does it matter?

5.      Is a regret for someone/something gone a bad thing? If not, what is its rightful place, and for how long?

6.      Donny was a mentor to me, taught me superior skills in sports, a good nature, a good picture of adulthood.

7.      Joanie Mitchell: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

Youth

Donny floated into my life

as a lithe paper airplane lands on

a grade-schooler’s desk.

He was young-at-heart uncle to a friend of mine.

He settled in with us—

our coach, like a little league dad,

as we went at it—zealots

in our alley,

empty lot,

and on the dead-end

nearby street.

He’d been a star athlete,

and brought us

his care-filled tutelage

sprung from Apollo.

We shone.

We graduated.

When I began high school

he drove me there each morning

on his way to work.

We talked and belly-laughed—

about teachers we both knew.

Then came the sports and

the girls and the new friends

I chose to ride with

on the school bus.

One day,

as if the sun came up

for the first time,

I noticed.

He was gone,

then the light went out.

© 2012 Allan Cox, Allan Cox & Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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