Friends In High Places

Friends in a frame...
Their dark hair now matching pale halos;
soft corn silk in the California sun.

Friends of my youth...
Here now in my aging.
We walked together thru the streets of turmoil and tribulation.
Their lantern illuminating
The corded love that filled my shoddy shoes with will.

I curled in the cathedral corner of terror,
and rocked the cradle of a wishful aching...
Rocked to the refrain of their closed circle;
from the center rose the sounds of worship and song;
melodies of praise that harmonized with my mourning.

When I wept black tears
of a midnight loneliness, my life broken,
its flowers scattered into petal and seed....
The white cloth of their belief
wiped the shame stained tears from my cheek with wings.

My friends, smiling at me now
across a continent of miles and years.
From the confines of a glossy photo
their lips curl in cherub smiles.....
They watch over me.
They follow every track and trail
and the corded love
deftly braided by the hand of fate knows no separation.

Let me linger here
in the creases of their eyes,
warmed by golden stones that lie under the pale strands...
The halos softened by years and sun.
My angels still.
Let me breathe in the life of laughter
that echos down the distant miles
in the exhaled wind of their breathless joy.

Friends who gave their goodness
in exchange for wounds.
My offering from the pockets of my dreams?
Just tattered poems from a shattered soul
and the rare pearls gathered from the way less traveled
thru the halls of human fracturing..

They made bandages of linen grace
and poultices of casseroles and chatter...
Up from the legs of their tables
Rose the pillars that held up the sky.

They look down at me now,
smiling on the blooming of their belief.

My creases of safety still,
Their watchful eyes.

p. lawrence