*****
Recorded Reading: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fg7s74yxr3oh90p/gifts%20of%20love%20and%20joy.mp3?dl=0
*****
Gifts of Love and Joy
We can recognize true friendship
By a whole shortlist of things
One true friend unto another
Unconditionally brings
Primary among them
Prevailing assumption be
Between them that one also
On behalf of other see ~
One out for the other looks
Has the other’s back
Truth has grown between them
Of trust there is no lack
Another gift a true friend gives
Is silence — listening
With all the heart to brethren heart;
Redemptive witnessing
As well, the deep, full empathy
Only brought by brother love
Permits constructive offering
Suggestions successfully of
Which smooth the path, which give a lift
Which ease the load, which pave the way
To an understanding
There might be a brighter day
A true friend’s there for no good cause
Than the enjoyment be
Not in your status or your roll
But in your company
And while there may be found abroad
Not many, but a few
Whom a friend will be in need —
Rarer still, indeed, indeed,
Are those will celebrate with you
From the very heart
When fortune turns its hand around
And easier times start
A true friend doesn’t need
Be constantly hearing from you
It may be hours or weeks or months
And yet between the two of you
Understanding so exists
It’s as no time has passed at all —
But the acid test of friendship
Is recov’ry from a fall
That’s not to say that falling ought
Be an everyday thing
With all the waste, destruction
And distraction that it bring
But as the years go rolling by
There must between most any two
Eventuate a moment
Of significantly diff’rent view
If afterward together can
Companions come to shake each head
Put that misunderstanding
Gen’uinely to bed
Not by sweeping anything
Ugly underneath a rug
Not by giving our beliefs
“On behalf of love” a shrug
For it would be much less than love
Returning to us that we feel
If interest on our behalf
Were not as keen and real
As ours for they — what do we want?
What makes us tick, what makes us smile?
What is important to us?
What brings hurt, and what beguile?
An honest reaching out
To better understand, oh, everything
About the emissary
Whom gifts of love and joy we bring
*****
Among us, poets are ill paid. In order to continue her work, this one currently lives in her minivan, on an income of a fraction of our nation’s poverty level. If her work has moved, enabled or uplifted you, your contribution to this effort may be made at: https://www.gofundme.com/kx4xka-are-you-a-patron-of-the-arts
*****
Troubador of Verse 