Friends removed from themselves.
Once a year Harold would visit Rube.
Good dear friends,
to share a cup
stronger than libations
from the bay.
Tasting of grain raised along
Sandusky’s shore.
Why they visited less often
than good friends do,
seemed in keeping with their bond.
Men who gathered
to share dreams and losses.
Harold a widower
who kept his house the same,
as when his love had left him.
Rube, my father,
with losses that spanned the sky,
worst of all his son killed in action.
I sat at their table once
and observed a lachrymose beginning
to their drinks,
and as the evening passed,
smiles like the Cheshire grin
of cats, replacing the dim reflection
of eyes and tears,
and saw their friendship bloom
out of virgin soil.
For a while,
two friends in love,
and not in sorrow.