A friend comes to visits, heads to my picnic table, and we commence talking. Hours later, a dewy dusk has descended. I’m shivering, my sweater cuffs pulled all the way over my hands. Inside, my cats are grousing for a fire in the wood stove.
I remember my friend’s oldest son sitting on my couch, about an eon ago. The boy was so small his legs didn’t reach the end of the couch. Now, he’s thinking of heading into a PhD program.
I haven’t seen this friend in months, since before I traveled to Europe and decided I was born on a continent that mismatches me. Yet, we start talking as though I was a young mother again, walking along the dirt road with a toddler, my hair unbrushed for days.
It’s a cliche of course, how the world changes and how it remains the same, that one long Heraclitus river — always the stream, never the same.
The foxes didn’t return to den behind my house this year. A few stray lilacs bloomed in late September. The harvest moon sails up in the sky. All our hours of talking and we solve absolutely nothing, not a single problem, except this, perhaps: a fattening of our friendship, this woman who assured me I would survive my divorce, that my life would continue. The sun heads down, and we keep on talking.
Stony Soil Vermont 
We have different friends at different stages of life and if we’re lucky a school friend since we were seven or from the young mother’s stage and it’s great when they come back into our lives.
That’s really well said.
Just beautiful. Reminds me of my own friendships and how I treasure them over the years. Thank you
Such a complicated thing, too…. Thank you.
I cherish these talking hours with friends like a cup of good broth, nourishment, time to listen, feel and then go away and suck up all the thoughts and feelings in that brief time.
❤️❤️
That is lovely. We are lucky, aren’t we.
Oh yes!!!
I believe it would be “river of Heraclitus” or “Heraclitean river.” I have one poem on the subject…
Nothing Returns
by Michael R. Burch
A wave implodes,
impaled upon
impassive rocks . . .
this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear . . .
you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur . . .
telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before,
here where you have left no mark
upon this dark
Heraclitean shore.
That’s upside-down – lilacs blooming in late September!
I have a record this year, too…the pansies I planted in May are still blooming and looking quite healthy. That’s a first in almost 40 years of living in Vermont.
At least it’s been a terrific flower season!!
🌺🌻🌼
Well written. Thank you.