March 6, 1988

The morning we wrote friendship oaths
with the entire second grade, I thought you,
my girl, already knew what an oath was,
but no others did, so we said— a promise.

Then I could see in the corner of your eye
that you did know. We all said we knew
what friends were. Sitting tailor-style, in a
circle on the floor, we read Chinese oaths.

We spoke outside around a pile of dirt.
They promised to be friends long after
the hills were flat and things of that sort.
We went to tables and chairs to write some…

Do we have to write an oath?
Does it have to be to a friend?
Does the friend have to be real?

I walked around the tables hunching over to confer:
spelling of mohawk and hooray (one girl promised
to let her friend give her Barbie doll a mohawk and
the other was glad of Valentine’s Day).

The teacher nudged me to decipher your page—
rickety— the cursive came alive:

Be my friend, please
til death does us part
and if it be that for you
it be that for me too.

I felt each tug of parting in our mother-daughter lives.
How even, while together in the room, you flew
without me. Words your wings, ideas feathers
of your peaceful intensity.

After the flight, may we ask again and again:

What is an oath?
Does it have to be real?
What is a friend?