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OUR "BEST BUDDIES"
Not a long time long ago,
I predicted in a poem:
Called: "Time's Caravel"
Of how, as the years grow...
Even the best of friendships,
Obey and comply
To time's trite ego.
And at that time in my poem,
I had foreseen in vision's glow,
About my present and my past,
And my best friends future 'show'.
I had not wrongly predicted,
How to time's will we shall bow:
That I will be left on my own,
In my imaginative dreamy haven.
And miss those I once did know:
And when, today, I see,
The setting sun sliding beyond the slopes,
Of the silent and wise mountains,
I tarry ... to recall the phone call,
Made from a land not so far,
And my best man-friend's vow:
How he repeatedly kept telling me,
He would "most certainly 'rally'
"For some chat -- like old times --
Refreshed by a mobile phone tune
In a brief talk with his "best buddy"...
And then, as if from nowhere,
I 'heard' the voice of Doris Day*,
Singing as softly and sadly,
As it did three decades ago...
Her crooning giving me company,
Around the hilly stretched lofty ground,
And how she was still recounting,
-- Or so it seemed to me --
About how she was still missing,
Her best and "only true buddy..."
I breathed deeply and jogged,
Down the hilly tract,
Knowing that the "phone call"
Might be a "hare out of a hat".
That I will be humming there with Doris,
Her soothing style comforting me,
To come to terms with reality,
And it seemed that she was disclosing,
Like she does -- mellifluously,
In her soul-wrenching rhapsody,
The dusky truth about our friends,
We love to call "My Buddy".
How life and time changes!
And evenings aren't as merry:
As they once were, in the sixties,
when Mary Hopkins and her cronies:
Like Nancy Sinatra and Presley,
Pat Boone and Sandy Denny,
Along with the deep and versatile
Frankie Laine and Paul McCartney,
And oh yes!, The infallible SINATRA*,
Julie Andrews and Gene Kelly...
Now all these songs reverberate,
In my mind's ears...and deafen me,
As I hum some lines of Anka,
And of course, Eva Cassidy...
"Man's heart rewinds old symphonies,
And this makes the blood run faster,
As song re-depicts the moving scenes,
With the medley of melodies...
Surely I was totally correct
When I foresaw this -- everything --
How work, time, home and money
Affect even the "truest buddy!"
The pace of my jog increases,
And I smile at some young souls,
Playing and enjoying,
Dancing and singing,
In complete jocundity,
Like they were the best buddies,
Who play and laugh and yell,
About being the best of buddies...
Just like the way even we did:
My childhood friends and me:
"Totally happy and merry"
To be "each other's best buddy..."
Their crescendo amplifies,
The angst within me,
And I find myself trudging,
All... by my very own self,
'Lost' in my world of the eighties.
With the sun also having forgotten
To grace some evening steps with me.
Yet I trot on in my jog to the graves,
To visit and say hello to all those childhood pals,
Who had joined the national army,
And honoured their beloved country...
Then I reached the lake where,
I paused to take a breather,
And ponder....ponder...and ponder
On human beings' nature:
Near the light-house tower...
where I did somewhat shudder,
At the essence of hollow structures,
Staring like the 'grim reaper'
Who is out to destroy friendships,
And eradicate all virtues and values,
That mark the essential purity,
Of Adam's and Eve's one family...
And once again, like before,
My parched lips do remember,
The echoes and promises,
Made by my buddy -- when we were younger.
And to my strange amazement,
I found myself whistling,
That everyone is, in fact, a stranger,
To his own true self and his Master
And even his mother and father...
So is there any logic left to claim,
My buddy ...my truest buddy?
And yet again from the horizon,
Doris Day's voice wept and wept,
For all those innocent children,
Who grow up as equal humans,
And love to become good buddies --
-- Across the surrounding valley:
Oh, I could relate with her so neatly,
With the pathos and intensity,
Which was magnifying inside me;
As the song's tune and the lyrics,
Increased in supine grand splendor ...
Yes, both of us, Doris Day and me,
Were revealing musical parchments,
Topped up with the song's refrain --
Which was making us miss our buddies --
Nay, not just our old pals and schoolmates,
But what in her song has been re-defined:
As: "My Buddy, O, My Buddy",
"Nobody quite so true";
No one quite so steady,
The way we poor souls thought,
Of you...Yes, Just you....O MY BUDDY!
How friendship would have got more sweetness,
And the mutual trust its medals,
If Doris and I had been proved wrong,
By the thoughts voiced so effortlessly
And yet with a relic of hidden pain,
As evidenced in her: "My Buddy"!
