ANATOMY OF A FRIENDSHIP

For Rusty...

Most school friendships cannot withstand
the passing of years, of futures unplanned:
don't reach the place where fate begins
for two like us who've shared a space
and formed a bond time cannot displace -
we're closer, I feel, than most twins.

In fact, we're connected. Absolute.
My husband thinks it's all rather cute:
all these years spent living apart
from each other, but not in memory or thought,
and it was you in all honesty who mostly taught
me to confidently open my heart.

Ours is a bond that pays huge dividends:
it catches all of life's loose ends
and weaves them into a work of art,
a thing of beauty that brings new meaning
to otherwise arbitrary occurrences demeaning
and impels me to make a new start.

How many have pondered the meaning of life
when beset by years of unconquerable strife?
Well I'm no different from any of those -
I throw my tantrums while lamenting why me?
But is it that question that sets me free?
No, it's the empathy that between us flows.

The most exciting loves can be artifice
that keep us dangling between fire and ice
and combines incongruous
elements like dirty socks and chocolates
in boxes tied with ribbons, and illicit associates.
But in you I trust - you could never be that treacherous.

Yet sometimes our own lives become so all-absorbing
that for months on end we neglect calling.
We're immersed in the mundane
until a glut of disenchantment
overwhelms us with resentment
until we seek once more friendship's domain.

That choice between loneliness and baring one's Soul
often leads the faint-hearted to a safer goal.
But not so for us
because right from the start
we felt lost when apart
and there's no subject we cannot discuss.

Whatever happens we're there for each other -
yet ours is a closeness that will never smother
either's individuality:
rooted in counties many miles apart,
yet the contradiction (for we remain heart-to-heart)
forms the basis of our solidarity.