Birds of a Feather

Friendship, and who shows up. It opens on the quiet fear that no one would notice if we were gone, and answers with the title poem: look at your friends to see who you are. The first verses are about finding your people — two stink bugs, parallel lines that finally meet, a duck and two chicks out on the town. The middle is friendship in practice: joy doubled, sorrow halved, a silence that says enough, a plant you both have to tend. It doesn’t skip the hard parts — distrust, rival teams, leaving someone who makes you lonely — and it ends with advice for being a friend worth having: fold a paper crane for a stranger, and just be yourself.