Look as Long as You Can at the Friend You Love

Sometimes the best map will not guide you

You can't see what's around the bend.

Sometimes the road leads through dark places.

Sometimes the darkness is your friend.

--Jimmy Buffet

I've turned again to other people's poetry to express what I feel. Or rather, poetry has snuck back into my blood somehow. Or is it just this brand of sorrow (mixed with ecstasy), of confusion (mixed with clarity), of fear (mixed with a medicine beyond hope) that twists the world into poetry?

I don't know.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,

No matter whether that friend is moving away from you

Or coming back to you.

--Rumi