a circle of friends

we were fatherless boys,
or maybe it was the time we
were in, the late sixties,
the early seventies.
that's what comes to mind now,
so many years later,
it gives reason to why we bonded
in loyal groups, in rooms
or basements where we smoked
and drank,
passed around weak strains of
awful pot, home grown.
the fathers were not around
and the mothers never knocked
on the shut doors. they were
happy to know where we were.
work, or women not their wives
and alcohol kept
the fathers at bay, away from teaching
us anything, not that they could.
maybe that was part of it too.
they didn't know what to say to
young men without
direction. go to school,
get a job, any job, do something,
anything, what more was there
to say. what direction did
they have, and now it was
their turn to pass nothing along.
we evaded the war
that dragged on, hoping it would
end before our number was
called. our minds were on
girls mostly, sex and sports,
tonight, not tomorrow, tomorrow
was too far away.
so many summers we
listened to music with the door
closed, the weekends going
slowly by, like some old
river, waiting for us to jump
into and swim away.
some of us in time, did,
some didn't and still remain.