Everyone has friends that we have neglected and should be in contact with. Dr. Johnson's advice is always valid: "A man sir, should keep his friendship's in repair." As life spins out control faster and faster with jobs, children, television and computers we lose track of our friends.

One of the poems that I find very moving about our neglect of friends is the 1900 poem Around the Cornerby Charles Hansen Towne (1877 – 1949)

Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end,
Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone.

And I never see my old friends 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 but we were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men.
Tired of playing a foolish game,
Tired of 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 distance 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.

Shakespeare writes in Hamlet the advice of Polonius to Laertes: "Those friends thou hast, and the adoption tried, Grapple them unto they soul with hoops of steel."  I saw on the Internet the following which I liked a lot:

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to
new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints
on our hearts, and we are never ever the same."
~ Flavia Weedn

I like what Elbert Hubard said: "Your friend is the (person) who knows all about you and still likes you." Harry Chapin's song Cricles expresses how I see life roaring by me with old friends passing on to their reward:

All my life's a circle
Sunrise and sundown
Moon rolls through the nighttime
Till daybreak comes around
All my life's a circle
Still I wonder why
Seasons spinning 'round again
Years keep rolling by

So there you have it. Some rambling thoughts and observations about friendship. I hope something here may give your spirit a lift.