Questions

(A Jubilarian Remembers)

"What are you looking for?"
You asked in candid confrontation
That day we crossed the fields
(My friend and I)
Behind you
All those years ago.
And we asked you where you lived.
You told us and I tarried in your closeness
Sixty years.

"And will you go away?"
You asked in patent disappointment
That day you promised us
(My friends and I)
Life-giving bread on a bleak hillside
In the dusk.
And we asked you where we'd go!
I never went
But tarried in your closeness
Sixty years.

"Why weep? Who are you looking for?"
You asked in Easter joy
That day beside the tomb.
And I asked you in my turn
(You looked - for I was weeping - like the gardener)
Where you had put my Lord.
But when you smiled again
And called my name
I knew you to be you
And tarried in your closeness
Sixty years.

They're all gone now
Those years of faithful fullness
And still I tarry.
No need for questions now, nor answers either -
Only the pondered waiting
In joyful expectation of the fruit
Of long-ago and far-off promises
We made
(You and I)
And kept these sixty years.
Kevin Ward cfc