An old friend sleeps
somewhere you've not been.
He may be seeing
awful things
or lovely ones.  Of course,
you've no discernment,
for you dwell outside
his sphere now and outside
his dreams; for that matter,
you cannot sleep at all.

When his body gives
the sudden ****
you tiredly await--
when he falls
from the hammock
and breaks his arm,
will you reprimand him
for his fault?

Yet, could not you have told him
when he asked
for your advice
those years ago
that you doubted him
in the first place? that
his ambition frightened
you? that high-up hammocks
are beds for the foolish
more often than not?

Through the pain
of malbent joint and forced
awakening next to you
where you've watched
from the ground,
will he learn only then?
What if he reprimands
you, then, upon consciousness--
what then?  Or what if it's his spine
he damages, and Something Goes
Very Wrong, and he cannot speak,
but it is in the misery of his eyes
that you can hear him declaring,
"You could have spared me this!"
--what then?

Or what will you say
if he never comes down
at all?  And when?  How, even,
will you know that he has woken?
--that he's happy? --that he wishes
you had come with him,
hopes that you might yet?

An old friend sleeps--
or seems to sleep--
somewhere you've not been,
and as you ask yourself,
"What became of him?"
he looks to you
from his high perch
and also aches to know--
as someone below you
asks of you;
and someone beneath him
and someone beneath him
and someone beneath him...