We’ve Come A Long Way, My Friend

We’ve come a long way, my friend.

A long way since the smell of roasting tobacco drifting over lush fields, since those simple days of plenty and the lessons learned. My trials and yours, we endured through the darkest hour, and will endure through all to come, together or apart.

A long way since small talks of grand dreams, unreached yet within grasp, to us, us few not deaf to destiny’s whispers.

We’ve come a long way, my friend.

A long way since dark nights in lonely cells, since our shattered lives rearranged into a foreign pattern, a premature adulthood and a stolen childhood and an innocence shortened.

A long way since they gave the lesson, do as we say, not as we do, but we did as they did no matter what they said.

We’ve come a long way, my friend.

A long way, so far from home, so far from certainty in the meaning of our lives. So far from what we thought we know to what we think we know now when we know little of nothing at all.

A long way, my friend, you who have found love, me who endures through yields of sorrow and hope dimmed.

We’ve come a long way, my friend.

And such a long way yet to go.