Editor’s Choice

Friend

    (for Geoff Boyce)

    by Murray Alfredson

Some say the eyes are windows on the soul;

and your eyes wrinkle into smiles of mildness

to match your gentle voice.  You hug in greeting.

But it is not your eyes so much that welcome

as your eye surrounds, the creases worked

by circling muscle.  And physicians know

our eyes are windows to the body, not

the soul; they shine a light that dazzles through

pupils, and with a glass, peer in, and see

the retinas, the veins and arteries

that spider out across them.  We too see these,

an inside view across our orange vision,

limned darker in that glare.

                                            A doctor viewed your eyes;

he read small signs of growing plaque and warned.

So care for you, my friend, turn round those ills.

I am a selfish man not very far

advanced in non-attachment; many friends

I’ve bid farewell.  I’m tired of farewells.

© 2012  Murray Alfredson

Murray Alfredson has worked as a librarian, lecturer and in Buddhist chaplaincy. He is a prize-winning poet, has published essays and poems in Australia, England, and America, and a collection, ‘Nectar and light’, in Friendly Street new poets, 12, Adelaide: Friendly Street Poets and Wakefield Press, 2007.