Sam's Window

I drove all afternoon to see my friend.
I’d never known a more trustworthy man.
Sam lived above his aging mom and dad
In an attic room he’d shaped with his own hands.

His room was spare – a kind of hermitage
With creaking varnished floorboards laid with care,
A bed, a desk, a large Greek lexicon
So he could study scriptures after dark

After tucking both his parents in.
At 45 he’d never asked for more.
And laid out in the middle of the floor:
A giant pane of inch-thick window glass

Through which he viewed the living room below,
The fading sofa, TV, easy chairs,
Where his parents sometimes spent all night.
“This way I can make sure they haven’t fallen.

As for the glass, I ordered it last year
For a contractor who never picked it up.
It took six men to haul it up the stairs
and lay it in this custom frame I cut.

It does the trick. I spied Pop fallen once
and Mom too weak to help him back to bed.
There’s no way I could let them live alone
or in some wretched convalescent shed.”

We sat in silence. The long room smelled of pine.
I asked him if the glass was safe enough.
He broke into his first grin of the night.
“Watch this,” he said, and switched the room lamp off.

The large glass seemed to vanish in the dark.
Where it had rested now gaped a great hole.
I suddenly felt dizzy looking down
Into the glowing room twelve feet below

And just as I drew back, Sam took a leap
High above the hole with a yelp.
I cried for him to stop, but then – too late –
All six-foot-three of him flew through the dark,

A silhouetted shape of outstretched limbs
Heading straight for sure catastrophe.
But then he landed on what seemed thin air
That seemed to give a bit, but held him firm.

My mind knew what had caught him. Nonetheless,
he stood there flaunting the miraculous,
like Christ atop the waves of Galilee
as Peter gaped in incredulity.