Childhood Friends
Jan 23 2024
I envy the people
who are still friends
with someone they grew up with.
Who knew you when.
Who has no illusions.
And who, you know for certain
won't question, judge, reject you
no matter what you say.
In the art of friendship
they are Picasso
Modigliani
Vermeer.
Or perhaps even more
Norman Rockwell,
whose sentimental illustrations
celebrate the familiar.
And in its challenges
they are endurance athletes
who do the hard work
of maintaining relationship.
In our turbulent lives
where little is reliable
life-long friends are constants;
like those round bottomed dolls
you try to knock off-balance
but always right themselves.
Or like an old majestic oak
that's been there all your life,
its gnarled bark and massive trunk
immovably fixed;
you know you can lean on it
with all your weight
no matter what.
Your in-laws
blood relatives
one great love
are all obvious;
no one doubts the importance
attachment
sacrifice.
While acquaintances
are exactly that;
ships, that pass in the night.
Friendship, though, is too often taken for granted.
Forgetting
that you may tire of your lover
or be betrayed,
and may very well dislike
the family you're stuck with.
Old friends
who, after years apart
take up where you left off
and it feels perfectly natural.
Who happened to live next door
when you were both in grade school,
dared, and double-dared
who'd go first.
And now
half a century on
are still childhood friends;
there to the end
until the last one goes.
I’m not entirely comfortable with the sentimentality here. Not at all my thing, or the poetry I like to read.
Which doesn't invalidate the opening statement: it really is extraordinary, and I am envious!
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