Our Friendship

                      

 (for CR)

It began somewhere in the dark

of grade school classrooms

kid drawing projects on the walls

mother's cookies on birthdays

milk and nap-time in kindergarten

A red brick building with a flat roof

upper graveled playground

for the older kids fourth through sixth

the lower for the little kids

Miss Widebody had the little little ones

in their own

Yeah, that's cruel but I can't remember

her name right now as the past

slips away in confusion and loneliness

but she was patient and sweet

The principal was a tall rancher

who would be tall even now

making an in-town living

for payments his acres couldn't budge

My friend lived on the next street north

I lived over the hill

The folks gave me a camera

that captured faces with no names

including his

I could not forget his

His father was killed

serving in the Air Force

My father killed golf balls

on Wednesday afternoon

We played war as kids

to make a machine gun nest

that looked across my gravel driveway

out of boards covered with dirt

There were Germans out there somewhere

I was descended from Germans

My college didn't teach machine gun

He saved his own life

in Vietnam

with the real thing

Barry G. Wick