Ok, you need this poem to understand part of the next one, because I...*gasp* wrote a sequel to One Last Goodbye, which is really and expansion of the ideas in this poem, and this poem is referenced in that sequel. I know, a sequel is weird. I know it's crazy, and like most sequels, it is a pale version of the first. Yeah, don't really know why I wrote it, other than that I just felt like it at the time. So I'm going to post these two together since they go together and stuff. The first, A Leap of Faith is something I wrote about graduation about seven months before we actually did. Amazing how some of what I said came true, a lot of it actually. Before you read the second one Between Us, you might want to re-visit One Last Goodbye. I know that Between Us is not as good as One Last Goodbye, but tough cookies, I wrote it for a purpuse, I wrote it because...................I...felt like it. Ok, ok, so that's a bad reason. Too bad, I'm posting it anyway, so there. First thing's first...

A Leap of Faith

We are standing on a cliff
What lies at the bottom we cannot know
It’s a leap of faith
And some will fall and some we will leave behind
Some we will lose in the darkness
It is an inevitable part of life, this test
Our world is about to change forever
This chapter is closing and it can never be opened again
We say nothing will change
But it will
A few months only for friends to become strangers
To fade from our lives and get left behind
As we travel into that glaring future
So bright as to dazzle the eyes
We will reach tomorrow
But we will never again regain today
And at the end of the day the memories of this time, these people, and this place will be all that remain
Tomorrow must erase today
So bid goodbye, my friends, to all you know
Close your eyes, hold your breath

And jump.

Ok, time now for the other one.

Between Us

A year ago today

A year ago today we stood

And with lonely hearts spoke one last goodbye

How far we’ve gone on our separate paths

But how true the warning that I gave that day

When we meet there is silence, awkward and dense enough to touch

Separate experience stands between us

New friends, new places, new lives

There is too much to share,

Too much to ignore

And now we know it will never be the same as it was

We’ve scattered so far, and changed so much

More than even I knew that day

Some we’ve lost and some we’ve left behind

Some have fallen in darkness

When I spoke those words I did not understand

How it would feel, where we were going

To separate trials and separate pain

I knew we might lose each other

But I never thought we’d lose ourselves

I guess we weren’t ready after all

That mountain is high and none of us, it seems

Can cross that snow-capped peak without getting a touch of frostbite

A year ago I was right, I knew the risks

The trials we might endure

But knowing and understanding

Are two very separate things.

We are all a little lost on this great mountain

Floundering as the day sinks to twilight,

That sunny afternoon where we bid our friends goodbye has long since gone

And this mountain is cold in the darkness

Yet foreword we must go, through the icy night

The memory of that warm glen where we parted company

A light amid the darkness, a reminder of the home we once had

The lives that we once shared

But they will get us through, though for now the world seems dark

And we shelter in the memories of the world we used to know,

The shining ties of friendship that once held us together

And so we push on through this freezing darkness

Hoping beyond all hope that we will all reach the end

That day will break

To a golden dawn

And that all will turn out well

When we see each other again

On the other side of tomorrow