Sestina for my Longtime Friend

Sestina for my friend

Friends since Grade Three, lots of hist’ry

Sixty-two great  years I think

Teasing girls and running bases

Stealing bases you ran faster

I kept up as best I could

Reading, writing, playing cards

 2

Long bus rides for bridge and cards

Playing lawyers, reading hist’ry

Arguing the best we could

Ideal training, don’t you think

Can’t this bus go any faster?

When voices drop we’ll all be basses

 3

War in Asia distant bases

Not for us, not in our cards

We all read, but your dad’s faster

Zooming mystery, speeding hist’ry

He explained it well, I think

Thanks to him I found I could

 4

Movies always when we could

Stanley Kubrick’s lunar bases

China Syndrome next I think

Hockey sets along with cards

Science came alongside hist’ry

Me still slower, you moved faster

 5

Med school, grad school, happening faster

We both studied all we could

Medicine and music hist’ry

Long to study all those bases

Books and paper, study cards

What to know and how to think

6 

Mom and Dad you saved, I think

You treated our wives too, but cancer’s faster

Always you did best you could

Luck’s not always in the cards

Healer, father, best in hist’ry

Kindly watching  all the bases

ENVOI

I think I could imagine no truer, better friend

I am slower, you faster but we make it around the bases

If our cards are like our history, the future is fabulous, just like the present!