Ode to My Living Friends - Sharon Olds

[Lawrence Robinson]

Ode to My Living Friends


What a lengthy gap there has been between deaths!
It seems as if none of those closest to us
has gone, for what seems months. For me,
it’s been so long that when I think of someone
dying, I think of my mother and father,
my ferryers in out of nothing, out of the
temporary rich something they were made of.
I have carried them with me—not like a partial
twin, in a sling in front of and against me,
but in my body, in my brain cells. But you,
my friends, my chosen and chosen-by ones,
I see you as built-in aspects of the earth,
like elements, like members of the periodic
table. I know, we’re mortal—the open
door is there. But for weeks and weeks I have
forgotten that I’m going to lose
every one of you, until
the ones who are left lose me. When I
was a child, I could not have lost you, I did not
know that I would find you!—I’m blessed that it
will happen to me. Before it does,
let me say: you were exactly who I’d been
looking for, without daring to imagine.
Breast that presses against other breasts it was you!
Root of wash’d sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded
     duplicate eggs! It was you!
Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal I have ever
     touch’d, it was you.

	- Sharon Olds
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