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Three Reunions
1. Reverend and Mrs. Moore
Reverend W.A. Moore is a one hundred-five-year-old man
in a black suit, standing at the bottom of a staircase.
Fine white hair frames his pink face; his eyes are like dark blue
beads behind black horned rimmed glasses.
His arms are raised, welcoming my embrace.
W.A.'s wife, Eva, a head taller than he is and twenty years younger,
stands beside him in a brown cloth coat with heavily padded shoulders;
the skirt of her navy blue polka dotted dress is longer than the coat.
She used to wear a man's hat over her pinned up hair,
to feel safer when driving W.A. to church, or to visit parishioners.
They had a hobby, handwritten birthday postcards, plain white ones
the post office sells; and on them, in spiky script, in blue ink, one read
year after year the same words: "Be assured of our abiding love!"
And in the corners of the cards, "Live! Love! Laugh! Lift!"
W.A. was born the year the Civil War ended, and he died
the year after I left home. Mrs. Moore remarried then, Mr. McBride, who
did the driving in her remaining days. But for our reunion by this staircase
it's the Moores, together again, singularly joyful, no words spoken and
none needed, just one long moment illuminated by our abiding love.
Carol Colin, 2001
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