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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!security!bob
From: bob@security.UUCP (Bob Jordan)
Newsgroups: net.poems
Subject: Friendship
Message-ID: <713@security.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Aug-84 08:21:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: security.713
Posted: Wed Aug 15 08:21:51 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Aug-84 11:47:07 EDT
Organization: MITRE Corp., Bedford MA
Lines: 53


 FRIENDSHIP
 (for Kathleen)


 Whatever it is, that for
 me suggests the existence
 of your friendship

 I cannot say.  Surely,
 it's not the need.
 I cannot present to you

 anything that you truly lack
 or haven't already possessed.
 Therefore, what remains for conjecture?

 Memories perhaps, of another
 world, long ago, when I was
 older, more wiser than you.

 Would it have been life
 as we now know it?
 Or did it all dissolve

 into fragments of sleep
 such as a dream does
 when morning arrives.

 If, given another time
 with (of course) a
 different set of circumstances

 then who is to say
 that this friendship
 I offer you, now,

 would have been accepted?
 Could you have been my friend
 seeing in me those

 qualities which you have
 chosen to describe as my own?
 Or would I have been, once again

 in some different place,
 looked upon as only another
 person to contend with?