Always there when you need them

Old Friends

Old friends

My new bookcases stand tall behind me
Full of old, interesting, reliable friends
Poetry, libretti, short stories and novels
Dictionaries, quotations and biographies
They rest against one another easily
Accepting of each other's failings
Respecting each other's differences
Stalin alongside Maria Callas
Alistair Cooke next to Carl Jung
Mozart nudging Woody Allen
Auden observing them all

I was going to cull them
With a brutal determination
Out of respect for my new furniture
But, through the temptation of titles
The power of paragraphs
The might of millions of words
They, somehow, one by one
Climbed back, each to its own place
And as I work at my desk they watch over me
Old friends, grateful for a stay of execution

© Declan Whitney 2018