For Al Maginnes

by Peter Mladinic

As Covid restrictions relaxed, and we

slowly started to break out of our shells,

I resumed going to the local wellness center:

a gym plus, that includes a big play area

for children, indoors soccer and track.

The other day, on a sit-down peddle machine

I looked up at the second tier of the track

and thought: that power-walker is Sam.

Yesterday, I saw her again, she wasn’t Sam.

Only the other day I was so sure, and eager

to rekindle a friendship that had begun when

we were breaking out of our Covid shells

and one morning in the gym I met Sam, a tall,

lithe brunette in a Yankees soft-cloth cap.

God, she was beautiful! Young enough to be

my granddaughter, married, with a toddler

daughter, and another child on the way.

One of those people of whom you’d say

they are beautiful on the outside and inside.

We talked baseball. Her husband had pitched

in college. We talked about exercise, some

mornings we talked about nothing, but Sam

was as easy with me as I was with her.

Then I stopped going in the mornings

but one morning came back. Sam was like,

“Hey, where’ve you been?” The last time we

spoke, the last time I saw her. Already two

years past. Had Sam wanted to lean in

and be closer, would I have pulled back? No.

But she wouldn’t have leaned in. She

seemed happy in her roles of wife, mother,

and friend. That last time, she said “friend.”

There was never “I just like you as a friend.”

I felt her friendship, a warm light radiating

from a being as beautiful as any Playboy

centerfold I ogled in my youth. Yesterday,

when I knew the second-tier power-walker

wasn’t Sam, I was reading a Trollope novel:

Lady Arabella, trying to thwart a marriage

between her son and Mary Thorne, tells Mary

“You have nothing to bring to the marriage.”

Mary thinks: I have nothing to bring, nothing

to give him? I have myself! She’s so justly

affronted by her fiancé’s mother’s remark.

She has no money (so she thinks) but she

has everything to give. Sam gave me

everything. I’d be fortunate to be at her side

in the gym, or, for that matter, anywhere.

Peter Mladinic’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.

An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.