Dear Friend,
It was wonderful this week, to see and talk to you again.
You’ll keep me in your thoughts, won’t you,
as you go about your days in that far city
while I ply my life many thousands of miles away?
When I saw you on the corner, by our college, standing there
just as I used to see you all those years ago,
when we would meet at midnight and walk
long streets lapped in the neon lights of town,
it felt like I had never left – our city –
all those many, many, many years ago.
Do you remember? That day we first met?
At a barbecue in the quadrangle, with hamburgers and watermelon,
the juice running down our cheeks as if we were crying for joy.
We were just neophytes then.
We had much to learn.
Then how, when fall came, and winter, we’d stow ourselves away,
cuddled, huddled together in our rooms as we read together.
A long, snowy season we spent like that, testing, trusting,
scoping out our hopes and dreams as we lay together,
on your bed or mine, our bodies near each other,
enjoying just being there, side by side, to watch a movie.
In spring, we sat under the trees and watched the finches
fighting over grains of seed with which we sowed them.
With the coming of summer came my going-away.
We said goodbye at the gate of the college.
I did not know, then, when I would be back, if at all.
I didn’t hug you then.
I couldn’t.
It would have been too intimate, and yet too indifferent,
to hug when we parted, to enfold you in my arms.
This world is far too small for the love I have for you.
It was pleasant, it was pure, to return to you again.
What other word than “love” can ever come close
to expressing to you in full, dear friend,
what it is I feel for you, and always will?
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