by Ricky Hawthorne

 

Une brève réunion

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The traffic light changed from green to red

And there you were

Knowing me, grinning

At my stupefaction

Calling me by name

Running heavily across the traffic

Toward me as if a returning lover

At the climax of a movie

 

‘John’,  you cried and only then I knew you too

‘My God you look well,

What are we, fifty-five?’

(I play tennis oh, and I have a gym membership)

I head the corporation now you know

 

‘And smart in that suit;

But surely you were a dustman

The last time I saw you?’

(I went to college, at night, after work)

 

‘Yes, father’s retired now’

 

‘Where are you living now?

Never, however did you afford that?’

(Sixteen hour days and sacrifice)

 

I’ll inherit the house of course

‘And just back from Barbados — A second honeymoon’

(I thought of ours, in Skeggie, and smiled)

 

And the car and the Cretan Villa…

 

Then your conversation evaporated

Like a plump dewdrop

Pricked by a sunbeam

From a new star

 

Yes, these were yours long ago

My patron, my king

And here where all roads meet

We will always measure the distance

 

So we shook hands

For the first time while

Above us the lights turned green;

You went west, I east

But what I didn’t tell you was

That I’d done it all for you

 

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– See more at: https://scriggler.com/DetailPost/Poetry/20936#sthash.q0iMr5gB.dpuf

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Bio:  Ricky graduated from Warwick University Coventry, UK, with triple honors in literature, theater and film.
Three screenplays:
Myth – a modern allegory on Middle Eastern Current Events
The Abandoned – A doomed menage a trois straddles the carnage of WWI France
Pottersville  – Xmas Eve and Ricky, redundant, separated and drunk, crashes his car and ends up in Pottersville, the nightmare town from his favorite film
Three teleplays all adapted from his own short stories:
Is This Yours – A cell predicts horse-race winners but what else does it tell?
A Turn of the Wheel – A contradictory SatNav sends its poor driver around the bend
The Bell –  Recuperating in an old cottage Simon gets caught up in its ghastly history
Three Dramas
Ahasuerus –  The Wandering Jew finds himself outside a Concentration Camp in 1943
Lenten Observance – A devout Catholic is torn between family and God when he discovers his autistic son is gay
Litter – An examination of global warming from the inner human psyche