L.M., Massachusetts, USA

Please send me poems about friendship.

Dear L.M.,

Friendship, rarely sudden, accumulates like November snow.

Through repetition, despite distance or disagreement.

Through all we share, and all we attend to for each other.

Friendship values presence over performance.

With our friends, we can fully rest the weight of the whole of ourselves.

Sometimes friendship talks when we can’t, making us laugh our little spittle.

Sometimes she sits still and holds the shifting ground firm beneath us.

Sometimes intensity reigns, but steadiness stays.

What I’m saying is, friendship abides.

—————–

I’ve been thinking through your query, through poetry and friendship. Not just what it is, but what it does. What, on my best friendship days, I do to and for my friends, and they to me. It brings to mind this old poem of mine – if I ever tattoo’d a poem onto my body, it would probably be this one. A call to action; a reminder:

Crow Meditation
by Samiya Bashir

“Dip fevered neck. Plant
split-lipped calm. Spit wonder! Smile.
Starve dark fright. Be light.” 

—————–

So thank you for your question, L.M. – it’s been so good for my heart. In response, I attach for you, below, two poems that make my heart sing in the language of friendship – one from someone who I wish I’d known to befriend, and another from a beloved friend I miss.

Rather than what a friend might do, per se, these poems make clear what friendship DOES.

I hope they help,

Samiya

—————–

Having a Coke with You
by Frank O’Hara

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
                                                                                                              I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
                              it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

—————–

For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka)
by June Jordan

Redwood grove and war
You and me talking Congo
gender grief and ash

I say, “God! It’s all so huge”
You say, “These sweet trees: This tree”