Best Friends

Best Friends

You cannot call your child “best friend,”

words that only honored others bear.

Not against the law,

exactly,

but it’s sheer impropriety.

Whether son as such,

or daughter as much,

children are disallowed,

cannot share

so matter-of-factly

in that surpassing praise

reserved for strangers to your blood,

privileged people, most loved

but removed.

The phrase is maudlin fault,

smuggled emotion,

so far around the language bend,

so callow,

gauche,

it is barred from polite or any society.

Even if true,

it will not do.

Still, though all three of mine are grown,

have their own

connections

further on down

the chain

of being, they remain

abiding, secretless closest confidants

and, therefore, no apology, no social correction

in this ungrammatic, unretracted

revelation

(which will do

because it is true):

these private friends are best

not in over-reaching far-fetched

but honest

public exclamation—

which can and must be said

before too late,

without subtracting from unrelated

comrades

or unrivaled mate,

with their own deserved affirmation—

For these special three,

lifelong bonded company,

may their own progeny—

good, better, or best—

be equally, or eventually,

simply

blest.