The long unsent letter, addressed to a friend #

To have friends is to dance with the Ghosts - not just the Ghost of their friend, but the Ghost of themselves. In friendship, our past intermingles with theirs, as two streams to a river. And in that river, is the capacity to crash and corrode as titanics upon the rocks of life; and the capacity for stillness- to dry, to ripple in the cool pleasant rain. For moss lingers by water, acidic or alkaline, nature's red waste- and in this desert, the twilight of Ghosts dance like will o' wisps. The river licks the pebbles and morning's chill mist rises as a graveyard, settling dew upon the leaves- nourishing what once was dead as it leaves leaf- brushed aside in the morning work.

To have met as friends, we became strangers to ourselves, strangers to our friend - as no man steps in the same river twice- once warm, once cold, once dry, once overflowing and now drenched and dried of that river's stream.

To have lost a friend, and dwell upon them- we dance in the music of friendship- others deaf see us insane. In brief sanity, we dance with Ghosts of friendship. To this, wine was past brewed to taste romance of lost youth, paradise, dreams and sunsets as the rain falls.

In this experience as friends, strangers, dancers, jesters with the Golden laugh, Archers aiming with longing for the other shore...

I salute that ephemeral Ghost. Dedicated to my friend... for a long time, and for longer times to come.

Aaron

Published on 2023/10/29