Steve C. Stone
The Friend Who Never Was
I took a summer's day,
and added bad weather.
You were some cowboy that had just rolled in from Memphis.
The day was as blue as dolphins,
sunrise ignited the fields with one glance.
You strode out to watch the death procession.
You were there at 5.30 am,
your work done.
You learnt more from that one night,
than a thousand books could teach you.
Your friends were gone,
period.
But you,
you clung to the liferaft -
History.
We were sixteen,
stumbling recklessly out of parties,
eating up and escaping compliments at the same time.
I saw you by hissing trains in a ghost sunset,
dragging your jacket behind you like a plough.
I saw my name by chance when I followed you out there,
written in graffiti on a locomotive shed.
We were too close to ever be friends -
We had the same tendencies,
the same urge to be lonely.
You followed ravens,
and stood out in the fields with your scarecrow brothers.
You were up on the motorway bridge at midnight,
approaching life like a stranger approaches the city -
taking un-obvious streets,
without fear.
Page(s) 51
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