Recently, I set my hand to some poetry. This one is one of my favorites. It is sad, but it comes out of a heart that misses friends who are now missing in my life.

Sisyphus’ Elegy

The main things that hurt me

the Ache, the gnawing throb at the back of my neck;

Comes not from my enemies,

Overzealous and highly funded,

Mocking our silly grunting and straining,

They never worried us much,

Their doom is written in their empty eyes;

Nor from the children who periodically toss small stones at me,

The pebbles hurt if they hit you right,

But mainly you can block it out,

And forgive them their sins:

They know not what they do.

Absence is greatest pain— the absence of friends,

Friends whose hearts were knit with yours;

Friends

Who pushed the rock with you;

Friends

Who bore with you the curses and

The mocking and

The pebbles and

The pain;

Friends

Who were there at your side the last time you looked over,

Whose moans and sputterings under the weight of the stone,

Became your music and your hope as the rock moved inch by inch,

Became your laughter (when they sounded like your groans),

Became your peace (when the snorts sounded together or perhaps antiphonally),

Because you knew that together you could push the heavy stone,

Because it really didn’t matter if you got the stone to the top of the mountain to see it tumble down the other side,

So long as you pushed together,

So long as you were on the journey together,

So long as the sacred mission called you and I together.

Now gone

Their lack (the distance between us, and their missing words and work) does not ease my pain

For I sense their absence;

I am reminded by the void next to me each day, each hour,

reminded by the added heaviness of the stone,

reminded by my cry unanswered, unheard,

reminded by the pebbles hurting more

because I forgot to duck

or did not care to.