Some of My Best Friends

(I wrote this for a character in my big damn space opera; she's her ships' resident bard and poet...)

Some of my best friends are made of paper and glue.
Glossy covers with action poses and a dragon or two.

Inside them are fantastic worlds beyond counting,
With twisted plots to follow, and tension, mounting.

Some of my best friends are made of wood and strings,
Metal tubes, resonance chambers and things.
They move to the magic of numbers, elegant and terse,
And they move me to commune, be at one with the 'Verse.

Some of my best friends are made of carbon and steel.
Adamantine, and yet they are loved, and feel.
They are cold, and also hot; starlight shines upon their flanks.
And for every day spent in starships, I will give thanks.

My very best friends are made of flesh and blood.
All thinking beings, lifted up from the mud.
They are merry and wise, silly and kind.
Better fellowship than theirs, I never will find!

And some of my very best friends are no longer here.
I find them in a good book, a fine meal and a beer,
In the heft of a guitar or a starships' brave heart.
They're here and they aren't, but we're never apart.