"Hopscotch"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My old school chum waits

for me

I am crossing at the light

I wonder if we will even recognize each other

 

It has been forty years

 

I watch the Sun Seekers flip and flop past me

in their blissed-out tans and UV protection

along the main drag of Palm Canyon and Tahquitz

 

I have forgotten to ask what she will be wearing

 

The sign turns to "walk"

but now I jog across the street

because I can see her.

 

sitting on the patio

of the "Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf"

desert sun

on her red hair

same dazzling smile

two thousand kilometres from home

 

We meet and embrace and cry

It has been a long time since anybody

shed tears because they were glad to see me

 

she is the girl I knew back when

with the outrageous sense of honesty

and the "pardon me!"humour

We all channeled Steve Martin

back then.

 

We ask each other

"How long has it been?"

Since we were 19

 

And I think how strange it is

that life is short

and friendships are long

and one runs out before

the other is finished.

 

We have beaten the odds to meet today

serendipitous tourists in the same resort town

we chat

about school

primary

secondary

boring teachers

madrigal choir

rust bucket cars

girls we envied

accident-prone boys

the tough kids

and the know-it-alls

and our classmate who perished on the mean streets 

of Vancouver

 

How we played games on the playground of

Sexsmith Elementary school

 

We talk and laugh and laugh and talk

about our kids

and how similar our lives have turned out to be

as the bells of Palm Springs

(this hedonistic town of chimes that sound

like they are calling you to church)

ring every hour

four times

reminding us that life is a fleeting song

with a beginning, middle

and end

 

We recall all the old melodies

 

It is almost time for dinner

the afternoon has stretched out like

the elastic bands we linked into Swiss Skip chains 

when we were eight

The sun cares not a minute

for our chatter

packs away the day 

behind the purple rock desert mountains

 

And it occurs to me that she and I should play

a game of hopscotch

for old time's sake

draw an outline of childhood

right here on the shadowed patio

 

but she has forgotten to bring her lucky rock

and I have forgotten to bring my chalk.