Friends

Always vaguely dissatisfied with details of the daily grind and especially the way the “authorities” manage things, I have tended always to go my own way, though usually within the bounds of generally accepted behavior. This tendency to be on the edge of acceptability along with my natural reticence has meant that I often am more an observer than a participant.

Observation, combined with analysis, leads to conclusions about the behaviors observed. What follows are a couple of poems I have written about some of the people I have encountered and observed along the way. I hope you’ll enjoy them and maybe even recognize someone you know in them.

SOMNAMBULATION

Like a sleepwalker in deep woods,

I moved through what I thought were the chambers of your soul,

Seeking the soft, embracing pulse of your loving nature,

But finding only thorny, matted vines of fearful mistrust.

BRILLIANT BLUE

An awakening flower, I lift my head

Above the cool earth of my bed,

Stirring to shake off winter’s gray

On a rain tossed warming April day.

I think of you and cloudy skies turn Brilliant Blue

Leaf-like, swept by stream-washed shoal

Through dappled shade that cools my soul

And calms my spirit through and through

With a tender touch the way you do,

I think of you and cloudy skies turn Brilliant Blue.

In autumn’s winds I feel the chill

Of winter’s first attempt to kill

The green of summer’s smiling ways

With dark and glowering colder days.

I think of you and cloudy skies turn Brilliant Blue.

Like snow on winter’s wind I lift

Then settle in soft secluded drift,

Beneath the darkling storm-tossed sky,

Where, gently nestling down to earth, I

Think of you and cloudy skies turn Brilliant Blue.

FRIENDSHIP

Friendship sprouts in fallow fields,

We feed it from our souls.

And artificial waterings,

Will never make it grow.

So cultivate your friendships, friends,

Or they will fade away.

And you’ll be left – morose, bereft,

In the evening of your day.