We are afforded by time to understand one another, our place and relationship to the immense universe that spirals around us.

From the moment we open our eyes we try to learn what is first within sight, then reach, every glistening star in each other. It falls upon time to allow any more knowledge than that. A vast shining possibility of sensations.

I watched a boy, gentle and harmless become a man caring and kind, starving for love, not riches. First from family, those who were within reach and secondly from beauty often times an abstract of earth, if not of a womb.

Time allowed for many teasing sensations to course through his eyes into his heart, tickle his mind but not love. Love he so desired.

He moved slowly, spoke slowly. Some would take him for slow. Though mocked and tormented by the blind who surrounded him, he did not give in to woe nor spite.

Head never bowed, he found love in the woods, the sea and sun that shined down on him. His only reward.

The rare beautiful soul. He did not give in to judgement and ridicule; that, damming assessment of children then men, lost in their own doubt and frailties, all which he possessed. But he did not give in to the howls and chants or those that surely hid in the shadows of his mind.

How this spark of life did not become a raging fire burning every atom in its path, I will never understand.

Life’s cruelty ricocheted off his enormous frame. He smiled and chuckled. Time’s cascading absurdity made his spirit only softer. He marched forward without harsh word or raised voice. The gentlest man. My friend. My kind of guy.

But how I deceive myself. His life’s genius I discover only by death. God damned retrospect.

His unfailing admiration toward me. His slow deception, a final joke played upon me. He had seen in me what he had not in himself.

Yet here I tell you, he had what I now wish most. A life at peace. To turn the other cheek. To grow into my own skin; that, achievement makes him far greater than me.

I wish that he knew I have caught on to his final prank, the genius but now time will not allow.