SIMON + KAYAR

I love this poem by Charles Hanson Towne. He wrote it decades ago but it still fits well in our time too. I use this poem sent as an email to threaten by friends to be in touch..

    Around the corner I have a friend,

    In this great city that has no end;

    Yet days go by, and weeks rush on,

    And before I know it a year is gone,

    And I never see my old friend's face,

    For life is a swift and terrible race.

    He knows I like him just as well

    As in the days when I rang his bell

    And he rang mine. We were younger then,

    And now we are busy, tired men:

    Tired with playing a foolish game,

    Tired with trying to make a name.

    "Tomorrow," I say, "I will call on Jim,

    Just to show I am thinking of him."

    But tomorrow comes - and tomorrow goes,

    And the distance between us grows and grows.

    Around the corner! - yet miles away . .

    "Here's the telegram, Sir. . .

    'Jim died today'."

    And that's what we get, and deserve in the end:

    Around the corner, a vanished friend.