<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Ode to My Living Friends</span><br><br><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">What a lengthy gap there has been between deaths!</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">It seems as if none of those closest to us</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">has gone, for what seems months. For me,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">it’s been so long that when I think of someone</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">dying, I think of my mother and father,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">my ferryers in out of nothing, out of the</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">temporary rich something they were made of.</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I have carried them with me—not like a partial</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">twin, in a sling in front of and against me,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">but in my body, in my brain cells. But you,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">my friends, my chosen and chosen-by ones,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">I see you as built-in aspects of the earth,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">like elements, like members of the periodic</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">table. I know, we’re mortal—the open</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">door is there. But for weeks and weeks I have</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">forgotten that I’m going to lose</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">every one of you, until</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">the ones who are left lose me. When I</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">was a child, I could not have lost you, I did not</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">know that I would find you!—I’m blessed that it</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">will happen to me. Before it does,</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">let me say: you were exactly who I’d been</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">looking for, without daring to imagine.</span><br><i><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Breast that presses against other breasts it was you!</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Root of wash’d sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> duplicate eggs! It was you!</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal I have ever</span><br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"> touch’d, it was you.</span></i><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br></span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Sharon Olds</span></div></div></body></html>