I'll Fly Away

 

Tomorrow I'm flying away to visit one of my best friends from childhood.
(And one of my other best friends is also flying away -- have a nice trip, I'll see you when you get back!)

I'm taking a propeller plane to Pittsburgh, and leaving the family behind to fend for themselves, and I'm very excited. (Hence the pictures of the whirlygig seeds off my tree!)

I tried this trip once before and it didn't work out because of bad weather, but this one should be better because I'm going on a nicer weekend and for a longer period of time.

Maybe I'll blog some posts, although I doubt they'll be poems. I might even send a few photos back. Or, I might not have any time at all. It's up to Jan, actually. We have a lot of catching up to do.

About Friends
The good thing about friends
is not having to finish sentences.

I sat a whole summer afternoon with my friend once
on a river bank, bashing heels on the baked mud
and watching the small chunks slide into the water
and listening to them - plop plop plop.
He said, 'I like the twigs when they...you know...
like that.' I said, 'There's that branch...'
We both said, 'Mmmm'. The river flowed and flowed
and there were lots of butterflies, that afternoon.

I first thought there was a sad thing about friends
when we met twenty years later.
We both talked hundreds of sentences,
taking care to finish all we said,
and explain it all very carefully,
as if we'd been discovered in places
we should not be, and were somehow ashamed.

I understood then what the river meant by flowing.

-- Brian Jones

From The Writer's Almanac

Jan and I are still that kind of friends, even though the river is flowing and we are in different places, that we can finish each other's sentences. I can't wait to connect with her again, I've missed her!