Poems for Friendship

I found a box of Gay's recently. It was a special box, cardboard with hinges and a bow with  nice paper on the outside. I looked in it and read when was in it trying to figure out its theme?  How did these bits and peices all end up together? It happens like that around my house.... As careful as we tried to be nonetheless much arrived in Vermont



Let me share a few of the contents.  Readers may recognize them or some may not know that your card, picture, or note was in the box too. For some of you I will be mailing you something from the box because I think it speaks to the friendship of so many years and it obviously was something you all shared.          

I found two themes-- Maybe more if I pay attention ----- Do you want to guess?

Variations on the theme of friendship - A. J. Constance

I It was just like old times, as they say except it was better than the old times It was more like the new, new times to come More like what we are and are becoming and will be Than like what we have been and were.	II Whatever I can give you of myself, that you have not already acknowledged as your own What gift is left then to pass between us, but the living out of  that ultimate priceless gift of friendship already given and received and given back again.
III Was ever the wind so gentle on my face? Did sea ever stretch out its arms to such wise horizons? Has the sky ever been so full of peace and promise? Has it been that I have been alive here on this earth through many years, or have i just been born for the first time today, Into this world of inexpressible beauty and tenderness?	IV It occurs to me as I watch the wind move Through these ancient olive trees, that thirty years from now these ties between us will be stronger whatever paths our lives may take and that I shall cherish you then, in that quite different time (so far beyond our present seeing), even more than I do now.