After the Fire by J. A. Jance

the last
    Have cost us both the people that we loved.
    It takes a while to melt the ice, to take away
    The distance passing years can interpose.
    Once the ice floe breaks, we find that we are
    Veterans of the same far-reaching war.
    Our scars aren’t visible to naked eyes,
    But underneath a bland façade
    We both are hiding wounds that won’t be healed
    By anything but time’s slow steps.
    When our talk is over, we take in hand
    Our bandaged hearts and hopes and go
    Our separate ways. Maybe when we meet again
    The present tense will offer more allure,
    And we will leave the past where it belongs.
    He goes, but subtle changes have occurred within,
    A hint that springtime’s thaw is under way
    And flowers are pushing through the glacier’s edge.

Maiden Names
    Growing up in Bisbee, Arizona, I had three special childhood friends. Donna Angeleri was the first. She lived at the top of Yuma Trail, and we spent summer afternoons clambering barefoot through the desert that lined the far side of our street. We coasted down the hilly roadway with a maximum load of four kids packed into our Radio Flyer wagon. When I was in the third grade the Angeleris moved to California, and I never heard from Donna again.
    In fourth grade I met Pat McAdams. We were pals all through school and coeditors of our high school newspaper, The Copper Chronicle. School, marriage, kids, and divorce took their toll on our friendship over the years, but now, through the magic of the Internet, Pat and I are back in communication almost every day.
    Diana Conway arrived in Bisbee the summer I entered sixth grade. Her family moved into the newly remodeled house that had once belonged to the Angeleris. They lived there for a grand total of three months. The Conways were sophisticated oddballs in small-town Arizona. The kids called their parents Joe and Sally. They all rode bikes at a time when no other grown-ups in Bisbee would have been caught dead riding a bicycle. They all loved books, and Diana played the piano wonderfully. Without any noticeable nagging from her parents, she practiced at least four hours every day.
    At the end of that summer the Conways, too, moved to California. I visited them once, the summer after eighth grade, catching a train from Tucson and traveling out to see them. Diana and I corresponded for years after that, but shortly after we graduated from college, we lost track of each other. When my first hardback, Hour of the Hunter, was published, in 1991, I dedicated it to “Diana Conway, wherever she is,” in hopes of finding my long-lost friend. For years nothing happened. Then in 2001, a fan of mine asked about the dedication. It turned out that one of her good friends in Alaska was my missing friend. Since then, Diana and I have picked up the threads of our childhood friendship. And it turns out, my poem was right; our paths have been in parallel. Diana, too, is a writer.
MAIDEN NAMES
    To Diana Conway from Judy Busk
    We were young girls together,
    Eleven or twelve at most,
    Yet our conversations soared to galaxies afar.
    We carried books by wagonload,
    Dug for fossils, climbed a rock or two
    And swore that they were mountains.
    We lost each other later in a maze
    Of married names that easily removed all trace
    Of those two friends together.
    I think of you, Diana, and I know
    Our paths must be in parallel.
    I only hope someday they’ll cross again.

Changing Times
    My youngest brother, Gary, was an impressionable high school student when I was at my fiercest, most fire-breathing feminist stage. He made a key ring for me in welding shop and gave it to me forty years ago, when I was teaching on the reservation. I still have it. I am working on my laptop in the living room. The key ring is in the kitchen, resting in the top drawer with my other keys and a haphazard collection of coupons and Ziploc bags.
    I still treasure the key ring, but when I look at it now, I no longer see what is missing.
CHANGING