An Original Poem Inspired by an Old Friend By Danielle Kopp

When I was in high school I met a boy with the last name of Richter, who became one of my best friends. High school can be a strange time for teenagers, but some of us are lucky to leave with a few true friends. When we graduated I stayed close to home, but he was itching to travel the world and make films.  He achieved that goal and travelled the world making documentary films.  His travels made it difficult to see each other, but he visited when he could, wrote lots and lots of letters and postcards and made sure he was present at the most important times in my life - like my wedding day.  I wrote this poem for him in 2007 while I was a student at The National Writing Project at Rutgers University during the summer before my fifth year of teaching.

The Richter Scale

By Danielle Kopp

He is an artist,

always has been.

He can't help it, 

he was born that way.

Behind his eyes are many more

than twenty five years.

An old soul.

It took him a record of four times

to pass college Algebra.

Yet, the Dalai Lama found him 

WORTHY

enough to document his life.

Odd jobs, ideas, cameras, film, editing -

his is a world of constant change, 

collaboration and sleepless nights.

A champion insomniac;

he doesn't mind the dark.

Settling down is something he's trying, 

but years of friendship

gives me the ability to see

the way he longs for his travels.

For it is when he is wandering

the most unfamiliar of places

that he feels the most at home.

Long Days

No Showers

New Languages

Followed by the hundreds of postcards I used to receive.

Postcards that have become his footprints around the world,

proof that he was there. 

One year, on my birthday, he call me from Tibet.

A true friend, we're inexplicably connected by our souls.

Once he wrote to me:

Two trains run parallel, each on its own track,

but always keeping the same time.

Suddenly, they come to a fork

and are separated by a thick forest.

For hundreds and hundreds of miles,

they do not see each other.

But when the forest clears,

both trains are there, 

always keeping the same time.

That's where you are in my life.