Visitors' Day

Visitors’ Day 

We didn’t know then 

there wouldn’t always be more time.  

We didn’t know we would waken one day 

to the absence who alone could tell us

what we, too late, longed to know.

There are so many absences, these days,

so many orphaned questions,

that I could welcome, even, “so little time”.

You wonder why there’s not a day,

one day a year,

when a gone one could fill 

one of those empty chairs, 

and spend the day – so little time – with you.

Would it be someone 

So suddenly absent, so hastily gone,

there was no closing time?

(I’m thinking of one now.)

Or one who knows the family stories,

like “How did they meet?” 

or the feuds –  

“What really happened?”

I might choose one of those. 

I’d love to know

what I could know now, 

had it mattered then.

Or “Do you remember learning to ride…

a horse? a bike? a wave?”

Or some event or thing or fact

that would surprise them now:

for my grandmother (who made cookbooks) 

a microwave,

for my father (who complained)

the price of gas.

When you’re the visitor, 

what will surprise you, then,

as you sit in that chair?

.

What would we have done 

if we hadn’t always thought there would be more time?

We didn’t though, of course, 

because we did.