Over the last several years, I have had the unique experience of moving from one tightly-knit and well-established community to another, each time with little or no connection. Yet, each time, I have been taken in by people far better than myself and treated with such warmth and openness that I wonder how long such good fortune can last. But that is exactly what it is not. There is no good fortune. These people truly love, and such lack of reservation obliterates any petty differences. They show me themselves honestly, as I attempt to show myself, and nothing else is necessary. We can have our disagreements and our differences. We need not always take pleasure and enjoyment in each others' company. And still, we can find true friendship, for it rests on none of this. If the whole world loved as these people love, I doubt there would be a single unhappy person in it. Of course, no one is perfect, and neither are these people, but their love approaches much more closely to real love than anything else I have experienced. This poem is meant to capture that kind of love, and the way in which it does not merely exist between those who find shallow likenesses and commonalities. This love is human love, and the only likeness needed is the likeness which we all have as men, created in the image, and through the absolute love, of God.
Who Are You?
Who are you, that I know you so?
The years, as yet, are few
that carried us within the flow,
as years will tend to do.
There was no softly spoken word,
no touch upon the sleeve,that caught the sound so seldom heard,
the creed so unbelieved.Our thoughts did not find constancy
nor concert at a glance;our conversation seldom free
to turn upon a chance.Our smiles did not blaze with light,
as all the stars above.No, friendship sprang, as friendship might,
from this alone: I love.
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