My best friend was a semi-foe as well,
a man who would not make his bed, not ever.
You won’t believe this, but we’d talked together
the whole day through. Now, semi-darkness fell;
end of the working day, the murk of March,
two blocks away the ever-present river,
me wishing now that something would deliver
us from the non-stop natter, but I marched
ahead, saying my piece on ethics, ought-tos,
bearing one’s cross – but he had gone adrift.
With arms across and hands gripping his shoulders,
he sat there hunched, like someone frozen stiff.
This purely female gesture quite undid
the straight line of my argument’s direction.
I thought of what wise Gershenzon once said:
‘Deficiency is cognate with perfection’.