Why People Matter.

Had a good friend from my elementary years (believe it or not!) stop by to visit for just a little the other day. Am so honored that she thought of me when making her way out here...and that she persisted even when I was hard to communicate with and then of course that it all worked out and we saw each other. I am so pleased to have people in my life who feel like old friends matter and are of value. I can't really find the right words here to say what I mean so I'll share this poem by Brian Jones instead because he says it so much better than I can.

So, here's to you Angela! Thanks for stopping! You made me feel really....yeah.

About Friends

The good thing about friends
is not having to finish sentences.

I sat a whole summer afternoon with my friend once
on a river bank, bashing heels on the baked mud
and watching the small chunks slide into the water
and listening to them - plop plop plop.
He said, 'I like the twigs when they...you know...
like that.' I said, 'There's that branch...'
We both said, 'Mmmm'. The river flowed and flowed
and there were lots of butterflies, that afternoon.

I first thought there was a sad thing about friends
when we met twenty years later.
We both talked hundreds of sentences,
taking care to finish all we said,
and explain it all very carefully,
as if we'd been discovered in places
we should not be, and were somehow ashamed.

I understood then what the river meant by flowing.