"Innumerable Friend"

       Listening to a wonderful recording I made 33 years ago of a "last" car ride, my wife, teenage children, taking a French visiting student back to the airport after spending wonderful summer months with us as a guest.  It was a happy carful that made me smile with tears throughout its half hour length.

       On the other side of the cassette tape, I placed a recording of May Sarton reading her wonderful poem, "Innumerable Friend," which ends as follows:

                 Build an invisible bridge toward one person.
                 So the slow delicate process is begun,
                 The root of all relationship and then
                 Learn that this stranger has become all men,
                 Flows through the open heart as a great host
                 Of all the human, solitary, lost.
                 His longing streams through the conventions
                 Of diplomats and their meagre intentions,
                 Hunting for home like a great hungry wind.
                 He is the one, this our innumerable friend!

                 Let us forget these principalities, these powers;
                 We are theirs perhaps, but they are not ours.
                 Turn toward each other quietly and know
                 There are still bridges nations cannot overthrow.
                 And if we fight--if we must at the end--
                 These are the bridges we fight to defend.