My Best Friend at 12

I never did get to say goodbye 

to my best friend in the coal mining camp 

who did live across the street from me.  

This friend,—

for whom I gave my life at the Alamo, and 

with whom I played in the ’53 World Series, and

beside whom I steered a dinghy down the Amazon,—

was killed in Vietnam.

He died not in battle, not even in a “skirmish,” but in 

traffic as a military pedestrian, or so I was told

long after the event, too late to mourn properly.  

After lo, so many years away from the scene,—

not being there, but rather

safely tucked in my theology school dread 

when I learned he was dead,—

that remains among the saddest days of my life. 

Learning of his death I was flooded 

with the fact that I never said I was sorry 

for the time I did almost blind him.

Playing Tarzan, I pulled down upon him a vine 

from which we were swinging and, 

with a thud, it left a mark on his face

for his parents to hold against me and

for which he can never forgive me.