YOUR GIFT

I tried to read Rumi while sitting on the porch in the half-shade
but my thoughts kept returning to you.
I feel I have wronged you by loving you in a way
that you cannot return.
I have tested a good friendship
with questions of marriage that you had to refuse
as I knew you would
but desperately hoped you would not.
Yet, I have dared to risk it
and you, as the good friend that you are,
gave me to courage to do so.

I wish I had known this courage as
a younger person
and that I had a friend such as you
to have urged me forward, not so much with words,
but with the resolute belief that comes from
a steady gaze and a solemn face
glowing with the rightness of it all
that can make any person seeing it
a hero.

The struggles would not have been any less
I'm sure.
The tests would not have been any easier.
The failed attempts and many times
I missed the mark
would still have come.
The tears, the pain would have been there.
And, yes, the learning and the triumphs.

But still
I believe I would have been a better man,
more whole,
kinder,
gentler,
fiercer,
more courageous
and not so continuously afraid at my core
to have grown up with
a friend like you.

Jim Morgan   August 17, 2012