Today’s poem, I’ll admit, didn’t just happen today. My goal is generally to draft and revise and publish a poem each day in December. This poem has been sitting, unfinished, in my notebook, for several months. I started working on it during my last course of talk therapy as the themes of friendship and gratitude were significant in those sessions.
Today’s verse is the product of a few months, and realistically, a few decades of thinking about friends and what they mean to me. A lot of people have passed through my life, some leaving without a word or trace, but a few have stayed and walked and talked and listened and this poem is for them. I think they know who they are. Enjoy.
Church
I wake to the warmth of sunlight,
it spills itself in quiet rivers
across the floor, warm and welcome
as the presence of a friend.
There is a hush that follows,
a sigh of nature, a patient waiting.
I could live here, in this sun and silence,
where words fall like gentle stones
into a deep pool of knowing—
the right ones,
the ones that say enough
without asking for more.
Friendship is like that,
a space where the air isn’t heavy
with all the things unsaid—
where gratitude sits
on the edge of every laugh,
and we do not need to speak
to feel the warmth of each other’s being.
The world outside is wild,
but here, it is still—
the light is a prayer,
and we, in our muted voices,
are its answer.