Old Friends

When we were young and
gravitated toward others like
ourselves, we took each other's
friendship as it came, relying
and confiding and sharing
experiences, aiding ourselves
on the journey from childhood
to maturity, a gaggle of friends
whose frequent companionship
gave pleasure on the shores of
life's passage. Intervening years
of marriage and family created
another bond, but one that
dissolved to a degree the reliance
on friends as other concerns and
responsibilities sundered the ties
and long lapses of comradeship
turned into decades of benign
forgetfulness. Until a half-century
elapsed and the gravitational urge
of memory restored the will to
fill the long hiatus. Voices may
be unfamiliar in the absence of
youth, and physical presence
and bearing strangely altered
but for the affection brimming
in moist, faded eyes recalling and
embracing a friendship that never
really vanished, just temporarily
set aside, to be joyfully renewed
everyone concerned grey and
wrinkled, but humour intact.