“I have never considered a difference of opinion in
politics, in religion, in philosophy, as a cause for
withdrawing from a friendship.” ---Thomas Jefferson
My old friend is no longer my friend.
It was going to happen.
It's happened before with others.
I have been in winter with my country
and the people around me
since I was frozen just out of the womb.
You cannot support the north winds of hate,
those who freeze me
from my human rights
and expect to get my warmth,
my inner sun.
I've read enough about
my homosexuality
to know others haven't.
They prefer to maintain
their ignorance of my reality,
my being,
while they hold on to a few lines
from a two thousand year old tome
that has wrapped the tombs
of millions who were denied and died.
The new books know something new.
The Sunlight of the Universe
has made revelations
to us, to me:
that I am what I am.
To keep me from my flowers,
from the budding of my branches,
is to follow an evil season
to maintain an ignorance
that light, the Power's Light,
has difficulty penetrating.
I shall be the last generation
to hold the hatred inside of me.
It breaks up even now
like old ice melts in the spring
in shaded areas
when after days of warmth
a few sheltered shapes
end their cold, impenetrable dominance.
My friendship is not for sale
with a smile or a memory
of what we were as children.
This is now. This is me.
I am forever changed.
What I have wanted and needed
was denied to me even when
I thought I had found it.
I gave my love
and found the cold,
this world built around those I loved
and around me.
The walls melt.
The dams of ice now belong to the few
who remain stuck in their frozen beliefs.
I am thawed in a new spring,
the kind that never ends.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Barry G. Wick All rights reserved
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