by Jack A. Urquhart © 2023

(In Memory of Raymond Lee Boyington 

on the first anniversary of his passing)

Just so You know, Dear Man,
here are a few things,
a small sampling, 
of what I've missed
about You.

Surprisingly, I've missed 
your everyday bossiness,
those relentless assertions
of "I know betterness," 
those eye-roll-inducing
pearls of wisdom
You were so fond
of tossing my way.
Strange, don't you think,
how the absence
of well-intentioned irritants
can leave one bereft, unmoored,
like one might float away
and nobody would notice,
the way You always did?

I miss the sight of You
from our upstairs window --
so like a jungle-cruise captain
in that ridiculous floppy hat --
and the way You ambled along
on your way home,
grocery sacks in tow,
already rehearsing, perhaps
the next culinary ballet 
for our kitchen stage.
God, how I miss them,
your scrumptious showstoppers, 
and the way You moved
in their making,
never hurrying the steps, 
a study in maximum efficiency  
and minimum effort.
As if, even then, 
You understood 
that all your resources
would be called upon
in the days ahead.

And I miss your stubbornness,
the way You'd sit for hours
over a trivial problem
of technology or taxation
until You'd broken its spell;
and then, when the solution yielded
to your well-tempered will,
I miss the way your smile
would crack brightly 
across the horizon 
of your face,
smug as a sunup morning.

I even miss your reprimands,
the way You scolded
that I was better than I am,
so much more competent
than the evidence would suggest.
And yes, after all our turns 
'round the sun and our stumbles
over that age-old hill,
I miss those up-too-early
Saturday mornings
when You'd peek 
from the coverlets
and say, "Come back to bed," 
like the matter was urgent,
like I was the alpha and omega 
of your astonishing, unwavering
ardor.

But most of all
I miss your boundless
curiosity, the way You --
ultimate schoolmaster
to the bitter end --
opened my eyes
to a limitless world,
the way You instructed:
Look! See the beauty
as well as the ugliness.
See the myriad ways
that we are different
and the same.
Yes, most of all
that is what I miss
about You, my love --
the way You gave me
an opened-wide-eyes
life.