Well Pogue,

Did you listen to the songs yesterday?

Did you enjoy Clifford T Ward’s Home Thoughts From Abroad ?

If you listen carefully to the lyrics you will know that he mentioned Robert Browning. If curiosity then got the better of you, you will have delved deeper and you’ll now know that Robert Browning wrote a poem of the same title. The longings of a man remembering his home and wishing he was there.

And Ward, he sings of his longing to return home and, more than that, to his love.

Both poem and song bear witness to the power of absence to enforce the value of something we have had in our life. Or, as more often said: “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone”. This can be so true when we don’t appreciate our situation or what we have. No where is this more so than in our relationships where so often we take others for granted and they do the same. I mean, there’s routine, and once we would have made an effort but now feel we no longer need to. We slip so easily from intimacy to shared space, becoming economic in much including thanks, appreciation and then high on expectancy. Imagination, once the fuel of who we were together, is laid down and excitement and thrill dissipate.

People fall into love. People fall out of love. Love can wilt if not cared for. It needs work, it needs energy, it requires time and effort and should never be assumed on.

So Browning and Ward echoed a truth. In the absence of the one we once declared we loved we are reminded why we said it. A lesson well worth the taking.

Wic