The Walk of a Friend
‘The walk of a friend, the line of a melody, the healthy throbbing of a motor, are known when they are seen or heard.’
Scott Buchanan: Poetry and Mathematics (1929)
And so they are; and so combined, Are cause for celebration: The motor and the melody Of human ambulation!
The dude’s roll and the chain-gang drag, The foursquare-down-the-line, The lyric ‘clearance from the mist,’ Are walks of friends of mine In copyrighted variants For like a fingerprint, A face, or voice, the human walk Is from the human mint.
Laconic shrugging of the knees, The pigeon-toe, the splay, The wagtail-pulled-out-on-a-string, The combative, the fey; The optimistic lope, the strudge, The bustling rise-and-shine Exemplars of each honoured mode I’ve counted friends of mine.
Man hands on mastery to man Of prancing or prosaic Gaits, in ribbons of design Deoxyribonucleic.
And it’s a small, redemptive grace That walks go walking on, With little in their chromosomes Forgotten or forgone.
They’re felt when they are seen, or missed, Beyond their journey’s end: A mantle in the memory, The known walk of a friend.
Kit Wright
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