Strange Meeting

He sat in the back on a well-polished pew,

alone, a churchman, white-haired, well-dressed, 

routinely here, in Woodstock, New Brunswick,

where my parents grew up, married,

and would now commingle again,

this time as ashes in earth.

(The occasion was my father’s funeral.)

‘That man was a student of Mum’s,’

said my sister, who knows such things.

But Mum died 32 years ago,

her teaching done 50 years before that!

I shook his hand. ‘In the one-room school

your mother taught, I was too young to go, really,

but my older sister, who was six at the time,

was afraid to make the walk alone,

so I was her four-year-old body guard.

I don’t know what she did with me, your mother,

but I stayed the day and walked home with my sister.’

I wish I had had the presence of mind

to say: She loved you, and you both had fun.