I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began -
I loved my friend.
Langston Hughes
When I posted it last year, I shared this link from the Paris Review offering this poem as Poetry Rx, and I also shared a story of a student at our school who lost a friend, a story that still makes tears come to my eyes when I remember that day.
This year they've all lost their friends, and so have we all. I know they, and we, are still talking in various ways, but it's not the same, and we all know it. One of my friends, whose loss I was already pre-grieving, as she was supposed to leave Haiti in May, left practically overnight, on a special evacuation flight due to the pandemic. She told me she'd like to stop by to say goodbye. I told her I couldn't let her in, because we have locked down our home for everyone who lives here and couldn't make any exceptions, but that I'd really like to see her. She knocked at the gate, and by the time I got there, she was standing across the street by her car. She'd left a box in front of the gate with some books in it and some weights, leftovers from a 48-hour dash to clean out her house and get rid of everything after ten years here. We yelled our goodbyes. Thankfully the situation was ridiculous enough that it made me laugh and not cry at that point, though I cried about it later.
There are so many ways to lose friends. Whether they choose to go, or it's chosen for them, whether you're the one leaving or the one being left, whether you get to say goodbye properly or not, it just hurts so, so much to lose people. I keep telling myself, "That's it, you're not making any more friends. You just lose them all." But then I keep making more, and I'm right: I lose them all, and if I haven't yet, I will.
But here's something happy, the Progressive Poem.
Amy has today's lines.
1 Donna Smith at Mainly Write
2 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
3 Jone MacCulloch, deowriter
4 Liz Steinglass
5 Buffy Silverman
6 Kay McGriff at kaymcgriff
7 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core
8 Tara Smith at Going to Walden
9 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
10 Matt Forrest Esenwine at Radio, Rhythm, and Rhyme
11 Janet Fagel, hosted at Reflections on the Teche
12 Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
13 Kat Apel at Kat’s Whiskers
14 Margaret at Reflections on the Teche
15 Leigh Anne Eck at A Day in the Life
16 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
17 Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
18 Mary Lee Hahn at A Year of Reading
19 Tabatha at Opposite of Indifference
20 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
21 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
22 Julieanne Harmatz at To Read, To Write, To Be
23 Ruth at thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com
24 Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering
25 Amy at The Poem Farm
26 Dani Burtsfield at Doing the Work That Matters
27 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
28 Jessica Big at TBD
29 Fran Haley at lit bits and pieces
30 Michelle Kogan at moreart4all
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