The Christmas Party

At the next table
is a family of laughers.
The girls are
holding the old man's thin fingers,
seeming to stretch them,
telling him silly things
about made-up flirtations
and they are all laughing.

The sons and daughters and wives
and husbands and children all come
for the punch the eggnog and the
spiced chicken. They wheel him
to the table as a team, so eagerly.

They laugh, joke after joke.
The old man's face is holding
what almost could have been a laugh.
But as we two sit at our table in silence
I study him
and see in his eye
the tear.