How can I help but reduce you?
Even now I’ve no line
to show you’re more
than I can see or say.
So stay, please,
and forgive me.
Forgive and watch
these passing fields,
and be the same
old friend to me.
Tag Archives: friendship
Of tea and mementoes
He spoke and I listened
every time there and back
We wore
a deep path of memory
through the war and
subsequent years –
clockmaker stories,
composers,
my house and his
I could see mine
across the street
An I.V. and more
I went spiralling down into my friend’s surgery,
into the needle they stuck in his back.
Heard them say, Don’t move.
Felt the hard force of it.
Don’t move.
Went with his eyes to the lights later.
You should see him on the courts,
the balls he hits.
Or did.
In doubles you’d make sure
he was on your side.
We’ve opened the inner sky and you’re gliding there now
I can’t stretch this page far enough
to show where you land. I can’t
see it myself. But the way you’re going
you won’t make a sound.
You’ll be the softest landing
earth ever did know.
Where it was shallow the grass poked through
Muddy furrows thoroughly filled –
the yard’s a lake.
You came across,
you in your boots
and green wax coat.
You had the mail,
the first in weeks.
The sun was shining then,
except for the clouds,
and where it was shallow
the grass poked through.
O friend, O friend —
O friend I’ve failed to be.
Would that I could cut out
the cuts that slip from me.
You rained in me
Not everyday
but twice on a Tuesday
and then not again
until I’d
dried every drop
considering
Hearts tricked apart
Verily
and – for shame!
unnecessarily
Earbuds now
serve the one lonely brain,
but we two
were earbuds once,
with two cans and a string
pulled tight in between.
Utrecht Journal 