old friends

there's nothing quite like old friends, is there?  even when old friends have new spouses and new babes growing and playing and the words we share in these hours with the clock ticking tell of things we would have never dreamed when we were all young and free together long ago -

even when the years between then and now have been hard, very hard with so many tears and swear words and waiting and praying and starting again -  and those same years have been filled to the full with healing of bodies and hearts and the ways we think, full of green living things rising from ashes and spring secretly winning winter over from the death and black and barren cold -

a night and a day isn't enough when an old friend is in town.  but it's something to be grateful for.