Pals

Their faces are still there; caricatures and cameos, amigo mugs and jug ears. Cheering, jeering chums that would phone at four in the morning to garble drunken thoughts, make momentous plans, or borrow ten quid. The oddball humorist and part-time suicide, the drama queen contesting her own shadow, the poet who never wrote a poem. The mon ami that drank for you when you could drink no more. Long after the late-night rides, I see their features pressed against softly glowing bus windows, as London transports them from other decades, even to far Ohio; their lips silently mouthing – warnings perhaps, or maybe just trying to cadge another ten nicker. ~~~~~~~ Authors Note: "nicker' and 'quid' are Brit/cockney terms for pounds sterling - money. "Cadge" as in - scrounge.