The Price of Friendship

The Price of Friendship

What price can be put

On a friendship?

None!

Not the measured sum

Of life itself.

Friends are part

Of one’s own self,

A fragment

Of the greater web

That weaves

The Universal Truth.

A Friend

Is one who makes up

Part of you,

The better part,

And brings forth treasures

Deeply stored.

A voice, a laugh, a glance

Worth diamonds

Etched with tears,

Scorched with rust,

Too precious

To forget.

Time is said to heal,

But it cannot

If healing is forgetting,

For then I should forget

Myself.

If friendship

Is a spark of fire,

Then ours has long-since died

On beds of coals,

Choking black and bitter –

A swirl of smoke

With pungent scent

Absorbing all.

You turn away

And forget

Or try to.

You say to me, be gone!

Or chip away

At ruby stone

That forms the heart.

Do you not know the pain

That crushes me?

Where is the love we shared?

Is it like a butterfly

Paralyzed by Autumn frost

With wings turned to crystal

That cannot fly?

Does it know it is dying

Or does darkness creep

So slowly,

So stealthily,

Like the breath of winter

Sucking out its life

Before it feels the chill?

Did it bid farewell

To summer skies

Or simply fall in flight,

A stiffness

Claiming wings

And darkness

Blinding eyes?

Did it feel its bed

Upon dead leaves

And the foot of Man

Crush down upon it?

No!

It was all over

Before it began…

I am ground down

Like corn is ground down

In the mill;

I am beaten

As batter is beaten,

And burned

As bread is burned over flames.

But in grinding, and beating, and burning

Is there not some yeast

To make me rise again?

In rising or sinking

I cannot forget you

No, never!

Turn aside from me,

And yet

I love you!

Without conditions,

Without reciprocation,

Without the heat of fire,

Or the flight of wings –

Love freely given

Never dies.

That is a certainty

Come wind and weather.

For you are part

Of my heart,

And the bond is beyond

This mortal vale.

Let it part someday…

Split, thread-bare rag!

Reveal the Mirror

Of Truth and Beauty

That reflects

Our inner souls

In the Light of our Source!

Then we shall see

Each other

As we truly are

And were meant to be,

And all the waiting

Will seem to have been

But a moment

For we shall love then

As we were meant to love

Fully, freely

Forever

Original Poetry