SUDDENLY RECALLING

Alone in the newspaper
           office, so I thought,
until I heard Emily
      crying softly behind me,
  phone-in-hand,

"It's my father--he's lost in the
       White Mountains--and there's
               a storm," and I
said, "Emily, let's go up right now
      and look for him," because I didn't
          know what else

to say, apart from a few
       inane reassurances. Thirty
  years a teacher, so many moments
                  unforgettable, but this one
     etched in slabs of granite, somewhere
          high in the
                 Presidentials.


Remembering a student
whose father became lost
in the high peaks and did
not survive.

October 11, 2003
 


All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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