By Simon Constam
In my 68th year, a woman with whom I spoke
only perhaps a couple of dozen times
30 years ago when she used to
come into my bookstore in Abbotsford
always with her small children, a boy and girl,
occasionally with her quiet husband,
came back to me in a dream.
Her precise way of speaking,
her height, her short hair, her angular shoulders,
her name began with an M, I’m sure,
her kindness,
her soft freckled face -
and now she was before me,
so precisely was it her.
She spoke quietly, it was so unusual.
I didn’t really catch what she was saying.
And then she lay down beside me.
I asked her name.
She would not tell me.
I think she understood that I have forgotten it.
She liked my red beard in those days
and the way I disagreed with her
whenever she wanted to talk about life and the world.
She would choose the plain meaning of a thing
and I the implications of it.
Then she tells me, as if I do not know,
that things sometimes don’t change as they appear to be destined to.
‘Remember my little son, Henry?’ she asks.
‘He died two days after I last saw you,
when he was 8.
I thought you might remember something about him.’
‘The effort to please God has never worked, has it?’ she says.
She asked if I remember him - Henry.
‘I don’t,’ I said.
I was thinking, at that moment, of taking her in my arms to comfort her.
Strange thing, though: she held and comforted me.
And then I remembered more from long ago.
Her husband, he looked a little bit like me. As I recall him,
he always stood behind her, was always answering the questions she put to him
but was otherwise silent. Didn’t look at books either. And I don’t recall him
engaging with his boy and girl at all, although he may have.
We were both young. It was long ago.
I don’t remember Henry.
I wish I did.
About Simon Constam:
Constam is a Canadian poet and aphorist. His poetry has been published in a number of magazines and online websites such as: LongCon Mag, Inez Magazine, The Jewish Literary Journal, Poetica, The Dark Poets Club and The Mark Literary Review. His first book of poetry, a collection of Jewish poems, will be published by Wipf and Stock Publishers in 2022.
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