Your Best Friend
The problem of the inclusive pronoun is still very much a problem for the writer, and needs an accepted solution. I tried for years with a suggested one of my own, but it never caught on. So here, I have simply alternated them--over and over!
Your Best Friend
You may not know him very well
and often slighted her at times
you needed him the most.
You neither heard nor gave a thought
to all the wisdom packed among
the secrets of her mind.
He fades from time to time,
and often thinks she is not wanted, nor
quite sensible enough to speak out boldly,
lest he bowdlerize the common sense
proclaimed by gilt-edged saints
enshrined in texts the priests
bear high above our nodding heads...
and would she dare to disagree?
But there he is--
and all the little thoughts churn
endlessly, and quite in vain.
She is your friend, conceived on skeins
of common cloth; his sources are
the mysteries the ages pass
to everyman, the flying residue
of concepts born of the enlightenment
that generates upon prolific shores
unseen--some call them mansions
of a heavenly domain where God resides.
I will not reduce such visionary
to a royal personhood, give him a sex
nor place him on a throne. She is
too much for anyone to pray to, bow before,
or lovingly array in ermine robes
and facial hair,
and that best friend denies his pedigree
to so assume.
And yet a modicum of faith preserves
a shred of confidence within
that she does not in plain reality,
so lead.
Your friend (and any God who may personify
himself) does so abound in unexplored
and virgin territory, that ready inspiration
is available to any meditator or philosopher
who stumbles over truth--best friend indeed!
No question is too much for her examination;
there are nuances to the myriad of answers
he may entertain, or at the least, confront.
No preachment is beyond her reach.
He leaves no clue to her identity, for
He is you!
~
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