Old friends

"Old friends, old friends sat on their park bench like bookends." Simon & Garfunkel

Spectator: The more reading they have done the greater the distance between them, the less likely they will ever meet again.  What frame will they share?  What harmonious thought?  There is no hope for bookend friends.

Bookends: It is true the years separate us.  In distance we grow farther apart, in space the other seems smaller.  When life adds volumes we are drawn away.  But we have a common support, this ancient timber that sustains us, running beneath, touching the two.  Called by many names, Earth, Destiny, Being, and Love. 

Spectator: It is little consolation when two dying patients share the same doctor, or the same sun shines on both enemy and enemy alike.  Let me climb upon this timber and I too will share your "sustaining support" with you, and yet will I continue to mock!

Bookends:  Have you not noticed we face in opposite directions?  Of how little consequence is your mockery!  It is in our nature to be contrary.  But if one falls the other is lost so that even if we are 2000 km apart the one will always be a sign of the other.  This is so even if no observer is present, and so, farewell mocker.

The Spectator vanishes, having neither friends nor companions of any kind.