Having each of you as friends

For more than 40 years we’ve been good friends,
since 1963 in fact, from college where we met
(and managed there to build a strong quartet
of campus friendship which kept those years intact,
still yet as clear as yesterday). The musketeers were we,
four sons of Nereid, or perhaps Persephone,
as different each from each as each could be,
all sharing camaraderie uncommon of the time
and fasting in the line to learn the pedagogic
trade. We graduated well in ‘64 and left that year
to fill the spaces our seniors had vacated in rooms
beyond the trainees’ sphere, filled with probationary
year acuity. Our meetings in those days were great
events of poignant merriment and risqué cheer
and exploits, when related, all too soon
extrapolated beyond the bounds of better judgment
(as considered by our management), and while
we often fell afoul we always brushed up well.
I recall the grande affaires of the early musketeers,
Aramis, Porthos, Athos and the eclectic Monsieur D’Artagnon,
but all along I never knew who was who.
I thought I’d be D’Artagnon, introspective, droll,
or Porthos muscled with a fork and dark intent,
singularly bent on righting wrongs,
but all the talk was wasted in a whirl of traded places,
perhaps we traded faces in the same, candid space.
I relive it now and then, I would live it all again
in hope of having of each of you as friends.
© I.D. Carswell
For Scotty, Seal & Abo