Posted in Rituals

Stand-in

Posted on by tq1695

We had been friends for a long time –
early twenties, to late thirties,
from the formative years ….  to the settlement ones.
Travel,
mortages,
career precedence …. friendship survived,
until
decreased by girlfriendship
sidelined by courtship …… evicted by marriage.

Pride dusted itself down and looked around
much company – rejection is not personal –
a new Queen and a new court.
An almost decade passes,
memory becomes forgetful of when inclusion was.

The road is sombre. The destination serious.
Terminal illness. The final visit.
The last town before the hospice city –
Unnecessary coffee stalls facing the unfaceable.

images of past vigour align with platitudes of decline –
what to say?
It is time. Eyes not looking, cast the room and snag,
a familiar figure bent in conversation –
the friend lost to marriage.
He is surprised to see me. Too surprised.

 

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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.