Circle of Friends: Poem

There is that age
when friends
replace family:

surrogate fathers,
supplemental brothers,
(for a man without brothers).

In middle age,
the circle widens,
as the hawk would do,

encompassing more
territory, more sky,
for what is required.

Then things narrow,
the stream forced
between canyon walls

channeled through
chasms, racing in shadow,
as sunlight fades

At the very end,
I might welcome
one friend, maybe two,

in a windowed room,
not much said
in the passage,

language on hiatus.
The circle contracts
to eye, to pupil,

diminished only
for a moment,
before the flowering.

This poem originally appeared in Atmospheric Rivers (2023)