@RonPrice,
Since today is the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth I'll post the following:
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AN OCCASIONAL PIECE
The great-great-granddaughter of the novelist Charles Dickens made some general and brief statements about friendships on the last page of her autobiography
An Open Book(Heinemann, 1978, p.205). Monica Dickens wrote that most friendships in her life "lasted not much longer than the circumstances which created them." That seems logical enough, quite a common occurrence in society, for millions of people, I should think. She went on to say that "the permanent, lifetime friends who age with you" until you die do not need to be in your pocket all the time. It is enough for you to know they are there. Monica said that she found it impossible to write about these friends.
Reading this passage stimulated a desire to write a poem. For, it seems to me, there are many variations on this theme of friendship. The following poem, this prose-poem, was the result of my reflection on this theme. This piece of writing is one of the miscellany of my occasional poetic pieces, as the literary critic E.M. Forster might have called it.(2) My experience in writing is like that of the poet-philosopher John Ruskin: if a subject interests me, my primary impulse is to write about it.(1) -Ron Price with thanks to (1)Joan Abse,
John Ruskin: The Passionate Moralist, Quartet Books, NY, 1980, p.12; and (2)Gloria Steinem,
Moving Beyond Words, Bloomsbury, London, 1994, p.11.
Circumstantial Friendship:
We got on so well,
really into it.
We both liked baseball,
hockey and sport,
watched the football,
a small gang of us
growing up
in that little town,
but I moved away
and never saw
any of them again.
Family Friendship:
Blood ties brought us
together two or three times
every year, part of the air
we all breathed in that family.
Then I moved away
and never saw them all
ever again, except in letters.
Lifetime Friends:
I've got their names
in my address book,
dozens of people
spread over two continents.
I could write about them
and I do occasionally.
They're not there
when I want them.
They're too far away,
most of them, anyway.
But we'd all have
heart to hearts if we met,
at least I like to think so.
But we won't, not now,
just a few nearby, but
that's enough for my life.
Immortal Friends:
In the Undiscovered Country
new and old friends,
where we refresh
with the crystalline wine cup
at the camphor fountain,
far beyond this darksome,
narrow world in the land
of lights and mercies
pressed down, running over.(1)
(1) 'Abdu'l-Baha,
Memorials of the Faithful, Baha'i Pub. Trust, Wilmette, 1970(1928),p.105.
Ron Price
14 February 2002