I know, I know. This is a super cheesy topic to write about, but hear me out: in a time like this, where we are required to distance ourselves from others, one comes to appreciate certain things a little more. We can most definitely stay in touch with people online and over the phone, and I would say that these are excellent ways to socialize.
All the same, a time like this also makes us realize how lucky we are to have these people in our lives. And while I can wax poetic about friendship, I think I’ll just let these poems do it for me.
Here are five poems about friends and friendship:
1. “impossible friendships” by adam zagajewski
image via psychology today
For example, with someone who no longer is,
who exists only in yellowed letters.
Or long walks beside a stream,
whose depths hold hidden
porcelain cups—and the talks about philosophy
with a timid student or the postman.
A passerby with proud eyes
whom you’ll never know. (read more)
2. “To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship” by Katherine philips
image via Today Magazine
I did not live until this time
Crowned my felicity,
When I could say without a crime,
I am not thine, but thee.
This carcass breathed, and walked, and slept,
So that the world believed
There was a soul the motions kept;
But they were all deceived.
For as a watch by art is wound
To motion, such was mine:
But never had Orinda found
A soul till she found thine; (read more)
3. “A Poem in which I Try to Express My Glee at the Music My Friend Has Given Me” by Ross gay
image via exposure.org.uk
Because I must not
get up to throw down in a café in the Midwest,
I hold something like a clownfaced herd
of bareback and winged elephants
stomping in my chest,
I hold a thousand
kites in a field loosed from their tethers
at once, I feel
my skeleton losing track
somewhat of the science I’ve made of tamp,
feel it rising up shriek and groove,
rising up a river guzzling a monsoon,
not to mention the butterflies… (read more)
4. “grand expensive vista” by andrew hudgins
image via Country living magazine
As we sipped and mingled,
regaled
with oldfangled
canapés and beguiled,
or entertained at least, by gargled
oldies, I disengaged
and angled
across grass tenderly groomed,
past where electric tiki torches gleamed,
and, alone, gazed,
now truly beguiled,
at my hosts’ grand
expensive vista, mortgaged,
yes, and, yes, remortgaged. (read more)
5. “the friend” by matt hart
image via vocal
The friend lives half in the grass
and half in the chocolate cake,
walks over to your house in the bashful light
of November, or the forceful light of summer.
You put your hand on her shoulder,
or you put your hand on his shoulder.
The friend is indefinite. You are both
so tired, no one ever notices the sleeping bags
inside you and under your eyes when you’re talking
together about the glue of this life… (read more)
Featured Image via Medium
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