On a September Day

What if new friends have been dead for nearly 400 years?

I sit reading on an open second story porch, companion with trembling leaves that seem to anticipate the next light breeze—hoping to breathe the sun one last time on a September day.

So in my 9th decade I read of men long dead and find a friend to amuse and challenge, as if new.  New indeed to me.  Biographies may only share skeletons made from memories, the chance leavings of a life, and yet they strengthen my resolve to live as if I deserve each friend, both new and old that will journey with me.

Each in some way implore that I recognize the truth of life, that I separate insight from the counterfeits of the marketplace.   

I can not say that I have merited such friends, or earned their respect or love.  Perhaps separated by 400 years I can at least be at ease and not be troubled they will know my own dissemblings They are not less friends for that. 

Katherine Rundell, in her biography of John Donne writes:

“The details of grief are different across time, and the places where the suffering laid their blame and guilt were different, and suppression and expression were different, and attempts at comfort were different.  But rage and sorrow and loss are rage and sorrow and loss.”

And so is joy and hope, and the fragile, beautiful belief that one can distinguish the real from the unreal, the coherent from the idle, pretense from truth.  In preparation for October days?