This is a collection of poems based on grief upon the loss of friends and loves through misunder-standings, betrayals and ultimately death. It is about the essence of loss which is a natural part of life. Dying need not be the ultimate loss of life but there is also loss through a broken heart or spirit. The need to recover from loss is not an easy path. Friendship, the price to pay for love, is all part of taking the risk in living. It's better to live and love than not to have lived at all. The poems start with defining friendship, then concern themselves with death, next the reactions to death, followed by the tributes to several friends who died, and finally the ode to death which calls upon death in its social context.
| FRIENDSHIP - Love | Breaking Friendship | In Friendship Scorn |
| the loss of a leg, | Be kind my friend.... unbend | He spoke in spite |
| amputation | Not to me or to memory | Acted in scorn |
| feels the leg still there. | But within yourself... amend. | It was about nothing. |
| The aura of where it was | We've loved as friend to friend | Magnified into a storm |
| still there. | On tumultuous ground | What matters is the cause |
| The flesh is gone | Is age to see it end? | When trust is killed |
| the inherent space | Soil packed firmly | The wound will scar |
| space...its shape | Breathes and grooms | With no trust willed. |
| shape in space | Trees bend, not break |
| still there. | By swirling winds |
| | Skies shimmer blue and gold |
| And so it is with friends | Defying sulphur fumes. |
| In profound love. | We've loved and lost |
| Love is then a force, | Countless friends |
| A base of life. | Will age still beat |
| Love a mover, a shaper | An aching heart |
| Love a doer, giver, truster | And overturn the pathway |
| Is still there. | Of friendless ends? |
| | Alive with pain |
| And the love one lost | Whose pangs prove life |
| Amputated....gone.... | Like earth and sky |
| Not there? | So will we find our way |
| No, it's still there. | And love, love, love |
| Love the force, | Till breath runs dry. |
| A base of life. | |
| Love a mover, giver, truster | |
| Is still there | |
| For the one who loves. | |
| | |
| MYSTERY OF FRIENDSHIP | Parting | In Friendship Torn: /05 |
| What mystery lies | Paths cross or lead | The heart may weep…shed bitter tears |
| In friendship born | To new paths...or old | On friendship altered beyond all years |
| What links...what needs | Will you walk with me? | The trust, the care, the need of belief |
| Cause us to be friends? | And for how long? | Is somehow stripped, leaving wounded grief |
| Broken ends are not | We have walked | Where are the days one cherished so |
| As simple as they seem | On such familiar ground | When feeling safe kept an inner glow |
| Quarrels may not break the links | For so long a time | To suddenly find the path o’rturned, |
| Nor breaks cause quarrels. | Did I not know | With dangerous bruises deeply burned, |
| Love in friendship | The parting of the ways? | Thus embedding the hurt of today. |
| Endures love in love. | The change of path | Then search the past where the heart may stay. |
| Yet friendships may break | That I should walk alone? | Yet past is past, face the hurt of today |
| From alternative growths. | Was it a word...or deed | Still…memory alone may win the day. |
| Or deepen in mutual history | That put an end to friendship? |
| Within the mystery | One deed does not cause dying. |
| As they are born. | Wherever, whenever |
| | The divided ways began |
| | Long before it died. |
| | So gently it crept |
| | I did not see |
| | Until the tugging and the tearing. |
| | Then its death came with relief. |
| | Is wounded friendship |
| | Always at death's door? |
| | Love on its own survives |
| | Friendship's death. |