Around the Corner by Charles Hanson Towne
Dear Friends,
I call you friends because I don’t have any living today that I will see again.
The Covid-19 pandemic has taken my friends away.
In my corner of the world, locked in, I was brooding.
Just like many of us.
We feel cut off and disconnected from our community.
For over a year, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone save for a handful of people I see periodically.
In the space of 500 over days, some friends left unexpectedly.
Covid-19 was something far away until it hit close when people I know succumb.
Around the corner
It feels like I haven’t seen my friends for a long time.
The ones I miss no longer live.
But today, I found this poem that resonates so well with the turmoil in my heart.
Around The Corner – Inspirational Poem by Charles Hanson Towne | Friendship Poetry | Simerjeet Singh
Around the Corner
by Charles Hanson Towne
Around the corner, I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end;
Yet days go by, and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone,
And I never see my old friend’s face,
For Life is a swift and terrible race.
He knows I like him just as well
As in the days when I rang his bell
And he rang mine. We were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men:
Tired with playing a foolish game,
Tired with trying to make a name.
“Tomorrow,” I say, “I will call on Jim,
Just to show that I’m thinking of him.”
But tomorrow comes–and tomorrow goes,
And the distances between us grows and grows.
Around the corner!–yet miles away . . .
“Here’s a telegram, sir . . .”
“Jim died today.”
And that’s what we get, and deserve in the end:
Around the corner, a vanished friend.
Many lost a friend or two, Around the Corner.
If you have lost a loved one, know you are not alone and there are people praying for you.
Grief is a process that takes time.
However long you need, please grief.
But in your grief, remember the good times and I hope to inspire gratitude as you listen to the narration of the poem.
May this poem bring you peace.
XOXO
Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949) was an author, poet, editor, and popular celebrity, he spent most of his life in New York.
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, his family moved to New York City when Charles was just a toddler.
He began his literary career remarkably early – at the age of eleven when he became the ‘publisher’ of the Unique Monthly, a children’s magazine written by and for Towne and his friends.
