FRIENDS FOREVER

My friends age as do I, but why
They don't, nor I, does say my eye
Too blind to read the stubble grey,
And face shrivelled and shrunk and dry.

I wonder at pics long gone by,
Guiltless, amusing, sweet and shy,
And ask myself if ours are they,
In spite of 'yes', memories 'ply.

Wisdom and age when friends I find,
Do conceal cunningly behind;
Come out memoirs from mental bins,
As we frolic with childhood grins.

We squabble over any matter
From petty to petite, and much more,
And bury deep the burdens of age
In stories, jokes and reportage.

When we become apart and 'lone,
When age proclaims old have we grown,
Re-live then we the days that's gone
And rapt within we live and go on.

Together young have we lived ever,
Together do we mature never,
In th' paradise we all have fallen,
So we don't grow, and have not grown.

The spoiler do 'home rules' present
Snatching one from the other's extent;
As we do feel all alienated,
Estranged and aged and out-dated.

So cruel's the 'nether world' to face,
So sacrilegious and so base,
That we come bouncing back to our league
From stress, from rusts and from fatigue...

Bless'd are we to be together
Despite constraints and change in order;
Resides in us an immortal faith,
Together so have we denied death.

                                   -- N P Samal