A Circle of Two

(in memoriam for Bob Hock)

5/20/31 ~ 6/25/20

I remember thinking

What if this is

the last time I ever see him?

Bob had just come from the CVS

and was crossing 42nd street with

an un-customary grimace on his face

contorting into a crescent smile

the moment he saw

me closing in.

I could tell he was in pain

and he probably 

didn’t want me knowing it,

never wanting to draw attention

to his defects or what might

be ailing him

as he was trying so clumsily 

to be one of the living.

“Oh Bob,” he would scold himself

in the third person,

“Pull yourself together.”

But there we stood

on that perpetually windy corner,

Bob’s CVS bag bloated

with an addict’s spoils

and me gripping my backpack 

cross my shoulder,

chockfull of vague concern.

 “You’re the soul of determination”

I told him, trying to be

encouraging. 

I had heard he’d come round

in the last week

to Bingo and was looking much better.

They say he’d even been

seen gobbling down an ungainly sized

wedge of cake at the senior hour;

a grown man mimicking

a saucer-eyed child.

I can just see the theatrical face

he must have made, 

the actor in him 

ever ready to

return to the boards.

Bob would announce himself

with that funny gait of his,

a stride that, I felt sure, had been quite sexy

in youth, but now had evolved into

a kind of wounded affectation. I knew

he was in pain only because

we once spoke about 

the spaced out effects of pain pills

after an un-characteristic confession 

that his feet

had hurt him everyday

for a decade.

Still, he managed to smile.

“How are you feeling,” I asked.

“Oh, I’m soldiering on,” he said flippantly.

Bob would always leave room

for life to return to a comedia.

His own pratfalls had unfortunately 

become all too common.

Dressed in his plaid

flannel shirts and suspenders

and sporting Freud’s reading glasses

you’d be forgiven to think him

a sophisticated hayseed,

but of course, with an Ivy League education.

Bob’s quaintness was disarmingly

old school.

I once saw him talking

to a much younger man

that looked like the other end 

of himself.

I wondered whatever were

they telling each other.

Why is it so odd

to see the young interact with the old?

Maybe because there's only so many ways 

you can hide infirmity with a smile.

And yet, he was smiling.

“I keep to myself”, he once said. 

“Young people are from outer space.”

I laughed, convinced that it

was just his fatigue talking.

But who knows? Maybe we are

all only the stuff of stars

until we birth a soul.

My inner thoughts continued 

to square the circle.

What if we were cobbling

our souls together

all along

every time we dared to use

the imaginary tools

of childhood?

If that were true, 

what an arsenal

Bob had possessed.

I say “had” because

this gentle accomplished man

could no longer recall

his accomplishments.

If it comes to that,

maybe the truest thing

we can trust in

is the present moment

after all.

Bob had a fear of falling.

Life had become a balancing act,

each day passed in

a death-defying circus ring.

Of late, he’d taken to walking

around the block 

gripping tightly to his rollator,

daring someone

to meet his eyes.

More than that, he wanted

to be seen through 

to his very insides.

To meet that person

who could comprehend the

journey that was curling

around itself like a nucleus

at the heart of him,

as if recognition might

close the circle.

Was I that person?

  

In this last year Bob

had lived like a moon

ever on the wane,

slowly surrendering

it’s phases in the sky,

unable to remember

his life

in the spotlight,

his handsomeness

sunk beneath 

it's lunar surface, 

nevertheless he was

a man of an

astronomical inner beauty.

Now, here, amidst 

the unrelenting realism

of 10th and 43rd street,

a wind conspiring to 

blow us both away.

I hugged this 

tender comrade 

of a man

and for one 

indistinguishable moment

we were 

a circle of two.

Peter Valentyne

February 9th, 2019