Kate Doughty
AP English
Friend
A small world;
cut-off
From the sun-strewn,
manicured land.
I duck under eves and
enter
The hall where
ageless giant stands;
Of solid trunk and
ancient soul,
Weathered skin scarred by lover's marks
Young hands meander
over hide
Knots, letters,
words, misshapen hearts.
Dappled light and
heavy air
Richly Laced with
earth and loam
A smooth shell of
mottled green
Illuminates marks on
an ancient tome.
Silence falls like
bated breath
In a circle guarded
from the sun.
This battered hulk,
this ancient watcher
Has stood through all
and less and none.
Noiseless, wary,
cautions, caring
Careful not to make a
sound,
Tiptoe through and
carry upward
To where the sun
shines around.
Grip comes easy;
weightless
Along the marks of
those before me
I hoist myself into
the castle, the nest,
But am still
surrounded by their story.
And one day, greet a
friend
Only to devastatingly
find
The doom, the death,
the morbid X
The death-mark on his
side.
That day I climbed
and sat and waited
And woefully wished
it were not so;
But fate has stolen
him and left me
Bruised and smarting
from the blow.
His encrypted bark
now lies in mulch
And where he was is
nothing more
But a brown circle in
the midst of green
A gap that wasn't
there before.
My world is now a smaller
place
Its father defeated,
left undone
Reduced to fuel and
scraps and bits
Lost thoughts of an
absent sun.
But they, and he,
Lie in my head;
although he is no more
Now in the common
grows fresh and green
What was starved of
light before.
But under dappled sun
and darker air
A lost part of me
still resides
Attached, although
now to loam and mulch
To him and his
scarred hide.
And years pass, and
children grow.
My thoughts meander
now and then
To the solitude,
peace, benevolence
Once shared between
two friends.
And my thoughts
wander back
to the records that
they stole
And I like to think
that at least one lover's heart
Remains, in spirit,
whole.
