I'Ll Be There When You Recall Me Poem by gershon hepner

Midnight,31st December,
millennium night, sweet Linda said:
“Two thousand ways now I remember
Mrs. Pavey, who is dead.”
Mrs. Pavey had declared
when teaching her and friends when small:
“Millennium’s coming––be prepared!
I’ll be there if you recall
me when it comes.” And Linda did,
the sort of lovingkindness that
is most unusual now amid
our present proletariat.

At midnight on Millennium night, when Linda, Madeliene and Robert Rosenbergs and I were all gathered together at the corner of Edris and Alcott,90035, Linda raised her glass of kosher far champagne (not even near-champagne) , and exclaimed “To Miss Pavey! ” She explained these mysterious words today, nine years later. Mrs. Pavey taught her in elementary school in Croydon, and her friend, Miss Idle, would always reward her for doing her arithmetic homework by reading her a poem. She once said: “You’ll witness the millennium, but I won’t.” Linda’s words remind me of the story told about Neil Armstrong who is quoted as saying, 'Good luck, Mr. Gorsky' during his first lunar walk in 1969 on the Apollo 11 mission. Years later, Mr. Armstrong says that now that Mr. Gorsky is dead, he can tell the real story. He says that when he was a child, he overheard his neighbor, a Mr. Gorsky, being told by his wife that when the kid next door walks on the moon...that's when Mr. Gorsky will get sex.

© 2009 Gershon Hepner 2/20/09