Word of a Friend

 Word of a Friend

The word of a friend can salve a soul;
binding, minding, showing, knowing.
The hours and life and years make possible 
in ways mysterious and real. The words tinged, countless, 
in discourse tumbled: soft and hard, 
fine and plain, sweet and strained by turns.

“Who you are and what you mean” --
a spoken gratitude with clasped hand.
And, “Your life shows Heaven's grace,” he said,
not knowing, perhaps, how needed, healing, sating.
For persons feel poverty, induced by self and 
circumstance: by sin, to be short.

But friends can heal and words borne of love
in craft and timing go to ground of being,
rearrange, call to account, give wind to vapid lies, 
restore, make known, embolden, birth joy.

This my friend did for me a Sunday night past.
This verse says “Thank you.”