I like it    I don't like it

Old friends, old friends,

Sat on their parkbench like bookends

A newspaper blown through the grass

Falls on the round toes

of the high shoes of the old friends


Old friends, winter companions, the old men

Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset

The sounds of the city sifting through trees

Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends.


Can you imagine us years from today,

Sharing a parkbench quietly

How terribly strange to be seventy


Old friends, memory brushes the same years,

Silently sharing the same fears