The first time I met her, I was walking in the grove of pine trees beside the serpentine lake. It was just after sunrise, when a touch of the coolness of night remained in the air. I was deep in thought and unaware of her presence when she said, "good morning, young sir. May I recite a poem for you?"
Those unexpected words startled me. After taking a few seconds to recover, I told her that I would gladly listen if she would agree to stroll with me along the shoreline. She recited her poem for me as we watched the fishermen in their boats, and a Pekins hen swimming with her eight ducklings.
I enjoyed her poem. It was clearly a tribute to the park. I asked if she authored it and she said no, it was written by an old friend of hers. I replied that I couldn't have done any better, despite dabbling in writing poetry, as well as being the park superintendent for the past three years.
I still remember her long gray hair being blown by the wind from the lake. I also remember the sound of her voice. It seemed off somehow... as if she had a cold. A cloud passed before the sun and she embraced me. She thanked me for sharing a part of the morning with her. Our conversation had been about fifteen minutes only. I wished her well and I headed to the main office. A few seconds later I looked back, but she had already disappeared.
The second time I met her, I was walking to the town adjoining the east side of the park. I was bringing a parcel to the charming little post office there. She was standing upon the sturdy old stone bridge that spans Nede Creek. From the direction I was coming, that bridge is the only way into town (if you want to keep your feet dry.) She waited for me to join her there and, after I did, we stood and watched a flotilla of ochre leaves drift by underneath us while we talked. It was very nice to see her again after such a long time.
I had recently started playing tennis and I suggested that we play each other sometime. She thought it was a wonderful idea.
"The park has courts, you know. You can just barely see them from here. Look over there, just to the left of the west entrance." I raised my arm and pointed in that direction, but she didn't appear to notice. Instead, she merely smiled beautifully.
The third time we met each other, we played a set of tennis, as intended. It ended up being a 6-6 final score, and we declined to play a tiebreaker. Several balloons passed over our heads during the last game, possibly escapees from a child's birthday party. We watched one of the balloons become ensnared in one of the park's tallest pine trees. I recall thinking that it looked rather like one of our tennis balls.
The fourth time I met her, we hiked across the rolling hills in the large south section of the park. She occasionally paused to allow me to catch up. Her hair was lovely that day, the color of a wheatfield in August. Her laughter still echos in my memory.
Afterwards, we sipped on sodas at a picnic table near the beds of the park's trademark black-eyed susans. She mentioned that she enjoyed tennis and was a fairly good player. Just a few years earlier, she had won a conference tournament while at university. She had actually considered trying to make it as a professional, but she opted instead to devote herself to her first love, theoretical physics.
"I noticed the courts over there", she said, as she tilted her head slightly in their direction. "Maybe we can play sometime, if you would like."
"As a matter of fact, I do still enjoy playing occasionally. I'll make a note to do that", was my reply.
"There's one other thing for which you might want to make a note", she suggested.
The last time I met Jonquil, I hired a cab to drive me into town. I had moved into a retirement home a few years earlier. I was dropped off at the ugly new post office building and I walked (slowly, due to my arthritic hip) to the Nede bridge. I sat on a lawn chair that I had brought with me and waited. I checked my old spiral notebook again. The note hadn't changed, of course. 11:59 am, February 3rd, 1978. I continued waiting.
Suddenly she appeared. She was walking briskly toward the bridge. I knew that she wouldn't recognize me, so I said, "good afternoon, fair young lady. Would you be interested in hearing a poem that I've recently composed?"
