Poet After Mine Own Heart

We Who Are Your Closest Friends
~Phillip Lopate

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.


a) The fact that this poem exists is all kinds of comfort. Ian Frazier said that literature makes us feel less freakish and alone. Thanks Mr. Frazier, for putting that into words. Thanks Mr. Lopate, for reading my soul.

b) What do you do when relationships with best friends have died and you're pretty sure they're doing the right thing (and maybe you are too) and all you're left with is a vague nauseous emptiness?

c) Yesterday I napped on the grass in the sun. Granted, today it was snowing and is cold and kind of awful, but yesterday I napped in the sun.