Collection

The greatest gift of a long life may be this collection

I have. I’ve taken it from everyone I’ve ever known:

A limping way of nodding the head, a distinctly nasal twang

In the voice, a wry wrinkling of the skin just outside

The left eye, the way the nose falls into instead of commanding

The upper lip, or an embracing rather than an enclosing

Hand shake. In over 50 years, I have collected thousands

Of these images of people in my memory. When I am in a crowd

I always see them again. Even my parents’ faces appear

In these strangers I see, but only once in a great while.

I see them in the older, kindly faces of people in Hawaii.

I do not always connect a who, what, when, or where,

But any face I see creates a stirring of recollection. Perhaps

It is our old next door neighbor, Mr. Beard, ambling

Away from his 1936 tractor that he kept running until 1970.

That young man with shoulders as wide as a hallway

Reminds me of Joe Czekela, one of my first students, scratching

His goatee over a fine point of statistics. In that Chinese tourist

Contemplating his Pepsi, I see a hint of Fred Wan, the applied

Mathematician I knew at the University of Washington,

Who developed the theory that led to Tupperware’s push-

Down corrugated lids. I can’t look at anyone without seeing

Someone familiar. I have met everyone in the world.