“It sounds wonderful. A life full and stimulating.”
He drew a pipe from his breast pocket and filled it with dark leaves of tobacco from a small pouch, lighting it with a match that took four efforts to strike. He did this all in such a slow ritual that I wondered if he’d forgotten I stood next to him. Then he looked at me and puffed, his cheeks like small bellows, until the pipe lit and smoke plumed upward.
“Since I’ve handed over the pages of O.H.E.L. to you, I feel concerned about how you see the work.”
“Concerned?”
“To be found the fool.” He set a hand on the back of an iron bench and leaned forward, his pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth. The wind rustled his hair and the yellow tie that hung from his neck. “Yet all seems right from this angle, doesn’t it? One of those moments when bother fades away.”
“Yes.” We were standing so close that our shoulders almost brushed. “Being here right now, I feel that nothing in the world could be wrong.”
He turned to me then. “But it is, isn’t it.” His cheeks rose with his sly smile, patient and waiting for my honest answer.
“Yes.” I pulled my coat closer, buttoned the top button to stave off the chill I felt coming. “The letters from home feel off. Bill is being hedgy at best.”
“Hedgy? There’s something he’s not telling you?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“I’ve never been married, Joy. How can I give you advice? But I can say that letters don’t always give the full rounded truth of how someone might or might not feel.”
“Not between you and me,” I said. “I understood you.”
“Yes.” He nodded and tapped his pipe on the edge of the bench. “Not between us.”
I stood in the comfortable moment, its ease, and wondered if I could take it with me wherever I went. “I’m not asking you to say anything, Jack. Or give advice. But suffice it to say that it’s been a terrible few years and I’ve lost my steady sense of self in it all.”
“Why do you stay, Joy?”
“God’s will, I hope, but maybe safety. Not wanting to give up on my family. I want to do the right thing.” I wrapped my arms around myself, rubbed my arms to get warm as the wind above rustled the nearly naked trees.
“Sometimes it feels as if God’s demands are impossible, does it not?”
“Impossible.” I nodded. “Love. It’s a complicated endeavor, Jack.”
“I’ve attempted to write about it—over and over—drafts of a book about the subject, you know. We are the only ones who have but one word for it. In Greek we have storge for affection, philia for friendship, agape is God, and of course eros. But even words, Greek or otherwise, can’t hold the truth of what it is or isn’t.”
Jack’s smile was then replaced by a look of such caring warmth that I wanted to throw my arms around him.
“Your first love?” I asked, tentative and with a smile.
“Poetry.” He paused. “Or Little Lea, my childhood home.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” I jostled him slightly.
“I worked on the poetry for years until I realized that I would never be good enough.”
“Good enough?” I laughed so loudly that he startled. “I’ve read your poems. They are more than good enough.” I shook my head. “I left poetry for publication and money. And you left it because you believed you weren’t meant for it. Either way, we both left our first loves.”
“But it led us to the prose and to the now,” he said.
I folded my hands behind my back, stared off. “You know what I believe?” I asked, but didn’t wait for his answer. “It is poetry that is rooted in the sacred. The prose is good and well, but the poetry is something else.”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes I believe it is only the paper and the words that understand me. I wonder what I haven’t tried—from screenwriting to essays to book and movie reviews.”
He was quiet, as if we had all the time in the world to watch the sunlit water move in waves, yellow and russet leaves riding the current. “A sestina,” he finally said. “Have you written one of those?”
“Oh, maybe not since school, if then.”
“Try it.” He stepped away from the edge of the bench.
“Before I leave for Edinburgh,” I said, “I will write us a sestina about these days.”
“Now there is something I’d want to read.”