Teach me grace, friend.
Teach me how to honour you.
Not to bandy your name about
in elate poems of praise,
although my heart may do that anyway
in poems that don't get written down.
Teach my heart to kneel
at your luminous feet.
Better yet! Let's spend time
beside some immortal Lake Michigan:
you help me up off the sandy blanket
where we just had lunch
and I say, "Thank you for assisting
your feeble and elderly friend,"
and you respond, with a glint
of mischief in the eyes of your voice,
"Oh, Thomas, you're not feeble!"