Sonnets on friendship
My friends, who often keep me where I am
opposed to in another place, require real
and concrete things from me, that I do
work. Work on my soul that I shirk
continually, work on my mind that takes
years and invariably gets me back
to square one. My friends are the source
and the bridge of my effort, what tends
to present as the shell but really is the seed.
All of this is tantamount to meeting god:
the conversation slows, then after a while
it stalls, and in the silence we recall.
--
It's hard to live and also live for others.
Hard to capture anything you want to tell them.
I find it crucial, though, at least to prove
in the truth of the heart, the difficulty matters
beyond that adamantine metric: joy
which if you seek inside your word and friendship,
accidentally you're liable to find instead
a fascination with the life per se, the god
who brandishes experience and memory as two
companioned horns prepared to charge.
It's also hard to dodge the rush of blood that comes
when the curtain's drawn, when life is left alone.