Little Friends
(For Ween and Levon)


The little friend might be a scientific partner, helping you with your
experiments, head turned up in clean appreciation.   Little friends mass in
thrift stores.  You adopt on hair color and compatibility.  Kung Fu
aesthetics are not the aesthetics of the little friend, but those of the
dense competition among equals.

Little friends are dirty; you've seen their expressions in phonics
textbooks.  A number of little friends might be arranged in a choir and big
voices could lead, guide the chimes of little friends.

In the morning, mist rising above the castle and hill, The Dwarf leaves his
den under the tree roots, eyes adjusting to the scene around the river:
endless little friends there in respect and confidence.  He is their
protector, and of course their leader.