Comedia

Prologue

Hurry, don’t be late

I can’t hardly wait

I said to myself when we’re old

We’ll go dancing in the dark, walking through the park

And reminiscing — Graeham George Goble

Act I

Imagine us together

sitting at Starbuck’s drinking coffee

after 40 or so years

reminiscing.

Our yes-yes recollection of events in that long-ago past.

Then, too, catching up on all that’s happened in the intervening years

Can you imagine that?

(signs aloha, Chris. Hits send.

Looks at undo button, hesitates, but doesn’t)

Act II

I can imagine that.

I think it would be fun, frankly,

but I have some distinct feeling that you wouldn’t enjoy it at all

Nostalgia doesn’t fit you,

I believe.

It’s almost as if you don’t have a past,

that you wipe each day away clean

like a window washed,

making it crystal clear.

That you see ahead,

never looking over your shoulder,

your background story a blank page,

your book’s never written,

your life lived

but never lived at all

except in the future sense.

Act III

Via email you tell me what I pretty much expected,

I guess.

You can’t meet me for coffee, and that’s it:

Chris, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time.

(End of transmission)

Epilogue:

You are still the master author of the future

mistress of gentleness,

our play a kind of closure without end

Review:

It’s not very good. No it’s not very good at all.

No one either laughed or cried.

No, it wasn’t a great play,

the decisive kind,

where I nailed my entrance and exit.

And the in-between lacked any meat.

The parts where I speak and gesture,

dumb,

I have to say.

It’s bad when the open, the wake, on one end,

and the close, the sleep, on the other,

are the best part of a piece:

That living part,

the conscious part,

which in this play

amounted to

nothing.

You see, Mary, I am still my best critic.

Note: Mary, write your line

Chris, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time

with a little more feeling.