My Friend My Love

September 28, 2025 Poet: Seth Kaplan Artwork: Strong Hearts by Denise Kester

My Friend My Love

My friend my love, I see you are gutted.

Hope lost in the jetsam of a murky shore.

I, too, am stained from wounds of these times.

But look what our strong hearts reveal.

Cut open, your humanity exposed.

And look, can you see my heart

is your home, a castle. Our dreams,

pennants, snapping alive in troubled winds.

My friend my love, it is a time of sorrow, uncertainty.

And it is a time of wonder and mystery.

Alone, our tears burn and turn to chalk.

But we are not alone. Feel my embrace.

When I look in your eyes I see rivulets of rainbows.

They fill this empty chasm with enchantment.

We two, knee deep in in a magical river, our sanctuary

created from the joining of strong hearts.

My friend my love you know this place,

where you will always find me,

where strong hearts find comfort,

where magic surrounds us now and evermore.

How else can two such as we make sense

of what lies below this kaleidoscopic surface?

I know these healing waters offer no remedies

for man’s bitterness. But a song of something more.

Let us stand together in nature’s elixir

until we are as one with the current’s rhythm.

If not dancers, a part of what dances still.