1: 47 at night, still loitering on the Pier <br />with the usual crew <br />when old Tom Duffy walked by unsteadily <br />and as he passed under one of the lights <br />his face emerged haggard and white as a sheet. <br />“Tom, ” I called out. He tottered to us. <br />“How’s everything? ” I asked. <br />“Bernstein, my son died, ” he said <br />bursting into tears crying like a baby. <br />“You’re still alive, ” said Hugh Stryker. <br />The remark took everyone <br />by surprise. Even Joe Devoe was shocked <br />and when he was deep into depression <br />it took a lot to shock him. <br />“You’re still breathing, ” continued Stryker. <br />“A sad life, ” sighed Tom Duffy, <br />“a sad life, and then to die <br />in his mid-fifties of stomach cancer.” <br />“Poor kids <br />to lose their father, ” said Joe Devoe. <br />“Never married, ” sighed Tom Duffy. <br />Devoe stepped to Duffy <br />then gently kissed him on the cheek <br />lingering, perhaps needing to smell <br />the sadness <br />forever, but finally pulling away, saying, <br />“Over and over in the lives <br />that have ended you see <br />no miraculous lunge into happiness.” <br />Duffy went on voice hoarse <br />worn ragged from weeping <br />“I told him, ‘Go out. Meet a woman.’ <br />I told him a hundred times <br />but my wife said, <br />‘There’s time for girls.’ <br />Now...in the grave.” <br />“Gone but not forgotten, ” said Devoe <br />wanting with all his heart <br />to shift sorrow <br />everywhere and for all time <br />into joy <br />but without God’s grace <br />so Tom Duffy still wept <br />staring at the vast Atlantic <br />dawn yet to come, if at all, <br />for a father in darkest grief. <br />Then another kiss <br />Devoe’s lips trembling <br />longing for purity enough <br />to sing that lullaby <br />of deliverance <br />he had sought all his life.<br /><br />Charles Chaim Wax<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-greatest-mystery/
