Poem for Our Friends Who Moved Away

At the party everyone got in line in their birthday order,

I was on mushrooms, I didn’t understand,

somebody shunted me into place,

thank God, I barely know where I am, I need

people—

like

even though Joe won always

we kept playing Bananagrams—

we just wanted to see him do it again—

or that

Alex, nervous about missing a meeting

still came to the pond in Maine

and got in the water.

As far as I’m concerned, I don’t go

to Vaughn Woods,

I leave there and return.

Winter always seems like years ago

until it returns, but if I sit still

and concentrate

my toes start to sting, the river ice

cracks and pops and yields to the softness

still flowing beneath—

then spring, talking theses and drama of far-off friends,

and a family poses for wedding photos—

wildflowers, grass high and sun, butterflies, crickets, and birds—

those are not clichés, I was there,

they happened.

Is this the last time we’re all at the beach? Better not to know.

better to fall asleep on the beach

while your friends walk all the way to the rocks at the end,

better to spend knowing you might overdraw

but it’s not a bank account, it’s time,

which is nothing

at all like money.

Oh, what a privilege it is

to really get to know someone’s cats!

And Claire,

perhaps your bathroom never had a ghost,

but the last time I was there, something

looked at me, hovering, loving, behind my reflection—

formless, voiceless,

just an insistence

that I belonged here.