Where Have All My Friends Gone?

It seems like only yesterday that I would go to work or shopping around town and see a familiar face, but they are increasingly difficult to find, it's like they all vanished without a trace.
Oh, Where have they all gone?

I miss seeing them almost every day. I miss their jokes that they must have told a hundred times and as I look around.
The old faces I once knew are nowhere to be found I don't know what to say.

I just found out today that one of the few that still remain had a heart attack and is in a lot of pain.
It's things like this that bring me to a pause as I sit in the shadows of an early morning and think.

Here I sit here now on my empty backyard swing , empty because even my favorite cat OJ too went away.
Now my simple pondering brings back thoughts and long ago remembrances of yesterday. I think of myself and all the failings that now beset me and I wonder why this has to be.

I was once strong and could run like the wind. I could climb mountains and swim across a lake but now I'm helpless as I watch more and more fade from this life every day.
I can't help but think of when it will be my time, when like that of old friends that a day will come and bring my end.

Damn I swear it seems that it was just yesterday but I now realize that this is not the case.
They say that light is the fastest substance around yet I think that it is time which travels more quickly for all I have to do is blink and then look around.

Thus I sit alone on the empty swing and find myself on the edge of eternity holding still gently my box of unfulfilled dreams.
So many of these dreams in my box I have, so many that no longer belong yet I still carry in hopes of someday. Silence now as I quiet my mind. I stare at the empty black sky and softly cry.

Yes oh yes, where have all my friends gone? I still dream but I grow closer to dreaming alone.

Then there rose a mighty roar...Be silent said the wind... be silent before the coming end. Never oh never replied I for you my darkest friend will have to fight me to the very end.

Yet, where have all my friends gone ?

J. Allen Wilson ©
8/13/2017