For Ed Bedford

That time we fished below the dam,
the crane appeared, as white as Sunday,
and impressed me more than any fish,
and I didn't catch a single, slippery one
and you slow reeled the morning away.

Everyone knows you don't need to talk
when the thin line glides the water.
And at breakfast, talk's but a background
for a meal that's never rivaled by ones whose
starched white cloth might once have been nurses' hats.

This is friendship. It doesn't need a lot of wordiness.
For that reason, its poems often sing too much.
Take Dick's "Last Words" for J. W.,
a poem worth loving without praise because it makes
of friendship & poetry something stronger than critique.

But there is more (and less) to all of this. Time
makes its holes in everything, from memory to resolve.
Even on the good days it's simply that you catch the same fish twice.
A lack of fame doesn't hurt as much as it seemed,
and a lack of love would burn bitterness through & through.

The thing about friendship is it doesn't come & go.
Neither time's speed nor distance's slip avails
when we need a break from pretending we were someone else.
A friend always sees more than he tells and waits for the light
to break when a dark time is needed to avoid the mirror.

Of all the Eds I've known in adult years, it's only
you who'd accept the title.Though acclaim eludes,
poetry's always at the edge of what we say.
We only fished that once, and that without much luck,
but when the bird finally flies, I hope you'll be there too.