Friendship

Grey, drooping-shouldered bushes scrape the edges

Of bending swirls of yellow-white flowers.

So do my thoughts meet the wind-scattered color of you.

A green-shadowed trance of water

Is splintered to little, white tasseled awakenings

By the beat of long, black oars.

So do my thoughts enter yours.

Split, brown-blue clouds press into each other

Over hills dressed in mute, clinging haze.

So do my thoughts slowly form

Over the draped mystery of you.

Credit

This poem is in the public domain.

About this Poem

“Friendship” was originally published in Minna and Myself (Pagan Publishing Company, 1918).

Author

Maxwell Bodenheim

Maxwell Bodenheim, born in 1892 in Hermanville, Mississippi, was a poet and novelist active in the early twentieth-century literary scenes of Chicago and New York’s Greenwich Village. He wrote many books, including Minna and Myself (Pagan Publishing Company, 1918); Advice (Alfred A. Knopf, 1920); Introducing Irony (Boni and Liveright, 1922); and the novel Blackguard (Covici-McGee Publishers, 1923).