Facebook Friend

I have never even met the man, never laid eyes on him in the flesh.
We didn’t attend the same school, and our kids didn’t play ball together
- in fact, I seriously doubt I could pick him out of a precinct line-up -
Yet today, I must say I consider him one of my very few close friends.

Call it the power of social media, the miracle of Facebook connectivity
- I suppose I prefer to think more in terms of peas and pods,
of flocks and feathers, of great minds thinking alike and what not -
but it seems as if my friend has been my mentor for all time sake.

If it can be fairly supposed that all humans have a yearning to be heard;
- to be validated, to be considered as having something to contribute -
it can also be understood that some matter more than others; that some
among us think more clearly than most, speaking with a voice their own.

So we lock and learn of human migrations, of America before Columbus, and of Siberian petroglyphs. We ponder the musings of Percy Walker and the art of John Boatwright. We tune in to listen to strains from Mozart and Beethoven, and we audit short courses about the Italian Renaissance and Southern Reconstruction.

In a world gone goofy collecting rectangular snippets of worldly wisdom,
and mostly predisposed to disparage what it so often misunderstands, my
friend stands aloof, like the lighthouse at Alexandria; a beacon in the mist;
a new paint job on a classic Corvette, an echo of the glory that was Athens.