Friends: A Garland

Annik

The citadel of Namur, posed on the higher cliffs The Meuse carves at its confluence, an hour beyond Brussels, Now houses a school of haute cuisine in two good senses, So, when I arrived by train, we drove up into the clouds

For lunch. Each dish appeared seriatim on a square white plate Dazzled with arabesques of green or sun-gold sauces, Served by very young people, nervous but secretly proud. We kept stepping through window-doors to look for the river.

It was all designed by your mother, who lives in a nearby village, Spy, and, although she can’t travel, cultivates local intelligence. Her father built the neat brick, well-trimmed house, and squared The acre behind it, fruit trees, vegetable gardens, lawn,

Where we landed (tipsy, replete) pulling my suitcase. Your mother Gave me a welcoming pat, kiss, advice, and cup of tea, I oddly enough requited with sudden undisguised tears. I forgot how long ago I enjoyed being someone’s daughter.

Cinda

Your kitchen’s in the basement, dark on winter mornings But never cold, stocked with the impromptu riches you cull Daily from markets along the canals, flower-strewn Even in winter, when streetlamps have to kindle early And gleam in gathering mist, shine on folding water.

How often, Cinda, I’ve sought refuge in your long line Of beautiful composed houses, and watched you ahead of me Join the endlessly complicated fray of raising children. Outside your kitchen window, beyond the sunken garden, We see the tree Anne Frank recorded from her attic room.

The neighborhood contributes to its preservation, Watching anxiously from kitchen windows, as its bole Hollows, balds, leans more heavily on the big crutches. Once it showed Anne Frank the seasons she could not touch, And she recorded them. Our children read the leaves.

Christine

Shopping’s our trope, because if memory serves we once made friends In Carolina’s minimalls and outlets, that bright winter Of January dandelions on the fairways and no snow, Twenty years ago. As if we were discussing strappy shoes, We’d talk of Jefferson’s stone and Descartes’ line geometry, And Baudelaire’s lost Paris, leveled and underscored by Haussmann.

So, when you finally visited me in Paris (it was snowing), I took you north of the Louvre through the Passages, covered, ornate, But seedy shopping arcades. In eighteen-fifty there were One-hundred-twenty-five in Paris, where gentlemen and ladies Could purchase without setting foot on the considerable mud Of Parisian thoroughfares. You were more puzzled than enchanted,

But followed me through Galéries Valois, Colbert, Feydeau, Over to Passages Jouffroy-Verdeau, crossing the Boulevard Haussmann, Into the heart of the Nouvelle Athènes, where Van Gogh, Renoir, and Cézanne Bought their paints from Père Tanguy, and Géricault met his doom At the height of the narrow, all-too-aptly named rue des Martyrs. You humored me through shops with dollhouse furniture and beads,

And bought us coffee in a derelict café hidden behind A museum of magical devices with Tussaud-style wax people. Today I learn these passages were the stuff of Walter Benjamin’s Last, greatest, mostly unpublished work, a tribute to Baudelaire And the power of representation: not too far removed, my dear, From your books on the history of God, and mine on Hilbert’s figures.

Jackie

Here we are again, by Cape Cod’s involuted shoreline, Looking out past pines and sea grass where, on the shimmering cove, Catboats and schooners sail past at intervals, and a red-tailed hawk Lands on the high island of a pine-crown, and preens for the camera.

Fifty years ago, it was only another beach, an occasion For getting tan, meeting cute boys, parrying waves, dozing, Reading romantic novels. Now we herd our children before us With some anxiety, and bring our binoculars and field guides.

We know that in four thousand years Cape Cod will vanish; Global warming might even accelerate the lapse. It’s only A remnant, a spit of sand already gently eroding its beachfronts Though real-estate agents buy and sell...