Alan Young Poet Couplet

FRIENDS AT 60

Then we were eight 
Boarding schooled, cold showered with hate-

Naked legs dangling and chilblained, not the worst age
Oh, for the holidays and home - me without rage.

Then we were ten 
We ride horses in the holidays - saddled by your farm men-

Your room, a low attic sanctuary with a red velvet chair, hidden from sisters
You have ways I don’t understand – my curiosity is unenlisted.

Then we were twenty, thirty, fourty 
Lives apart, together only occasionally for tea-

Planets on their long orbits that approach then slide away
“You were not at my wedding” you later mused – for me it did not hold or weigh.

Then we were fifty 
Next, living close on the same ocean water, silent and shifty-

Your home with mighty view, my place quietly lying in low scrub near a pond
We tarry for a while – me comfy like a foot in a sheepskin slipper, nothing beyond.

Now we are sixty 
Then suddenly, I flee my scrub dwelling, escape to safety-

One ocean and two continents distant, it’s fall
when I reach out – you do not answer my call.

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Alison A Smith October 10, 2026 at 5:56 PM The couplets and recurring age markers give the poem a poignant rhythm, tracing a friendship through closeness, distance and eventual silence. The intimate details—especially the attic sanctuary and sheepskin slipper—make the unanswered call at the end quietly affecting.