“Poetry, though we associate it with “I,” is rather fond of “we,” and not only the intimate “we” of private I/Thou relations. But the best poets are also aware that it’s a shifty and treacherous pronoun.” Bonnie Costello ~ The Plural of Us

“If ever two were one, then We” writes Anne Bradstreet in a poem to her husband and having just celebrated my daughter’s wedding, I’m conscious yet again of how in bonding with ‘other’, the first person plural comes to the fore. ‘Me’ becomes ‘We’ and arguably, the success of any union lies in the compromise between the wants/requirements of ‘I’ and ‘We’.

And given that today we celebrate ‘National Friendship Day’, it is fitting to consider the bonds bound up in the first person plural, beginning with this extract of Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s “Friendship after Love”

“… So after Love has led us, till he tires
Of his own throes, and torments, and desires,
Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze,
He beckons us to follow, and across
Cool verdant vales we wander free from care.
Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.”

We grow friendship bonds with very different significant others – lovers, relatives, our favourite pet and this feeling of the coupled ‘us’ can remain through the alterations that time brings and even after separation. Just listen to the I/Thou in this extract of David Ignatow’s “We”

So for today’s prompt we are writing a poem about:-

• We as a pair, a couple (not a group)
• It can be any real or imaginary friendship
• It might be a significant other, a relative or a pet
• But the poem’s stanzas MUST BE WRITTEN AS COUPLETS
• A MINIMUM OF THREE stanzas (preferably more)
• There are several types of couplets to choose from (see here for definitions)

And here are many examples of Couplet poems if you want some inspiration as to how to write your poem

And once you have posted your poem according to the above guidelines, do add it to Mr Linky below then go visiting others as that is half the fun of our dVerse gatherings.