[My dear friend Art Bohart wrote the following as a present for my 75th birthday last week. I’m pleased to post it here as a counterpoint to the poem “Seventy-Five”, which I wrote and posted here earlier this week. -Robert]
Today
My friend is turning 75
And having a birthday party.
I remember when I turned 75.
I staged my 85th birthday party
Just in case I didn’t live
Till 85. Robert and Diane came
To help me celebrate.
Sadly, I will not be there today
To help them celebrate.
This writing is about some of our times.
It is also about Time. Time,
The great haunter of life.
I think of Time like sheets of wind
Filled with rain. I do not know why.
Through the mist I see “shadows of the things
That once were.” They still are, deep in
My unconscious. I see Robert and Les
Coming up to tell me how much they
Liked my presentation at the Person-Centered Conference
In Leuven, way back in 1988.
Can I really see so far back?
I was 45. I was just (belatedly) starting
My academic career after my earlier one
Of turmoil and neurosis.
Their praise meant the world to me
And gave me the confidence to think
That I had something to say.
I am not sure I’d be where I am today
Without them.
Fast forward to 1996. Another shadow
Out of the mist appears.
I am sitting with Robert and Les.
Robert and Les are talking about their new book:
The formal birth of emotion-focused therapy,
A new direction in humanistic therapy,
Perhaps even a saving of humanistic therapy,
A savoring of humanistic therapy.
It is the only humanistic therapy that makes a
Major dent.
Even though I am a person-centered therapist,
It is the one I recommend to most students if
They want to practice as a humanistic therapist.
As the slide show through the mist progresses,
Rome comes into view.
Robert is now a tour guide.
I, who am “public transport handicapped,”
Have planned no trips around Rome.
Robert, who is public-transport literate,
Rescues me. I tag along while he and Diane
Take us by bus and subway and bus
To the see the catacombs.
The next night we roam Rome by foot.
We see cathedrals and fountains and enjoy
A dinner together in the cool evening
After a day of hot sun.
That hot sun brings back the tortured memory
Of how we suffered together on a bus tour we took
In the blazing heat to the Colisseum and nearby ruins.
Diane had to sit down for awhile while I could barely stand.
It was so hot I cannot remember enjoying anything. Did we see where
Caesar is buried? If so, so what? By then I couldn’t care less.
Memories of a friend who enriched my experience
Painted into my memory
Coming now as time becomes precious.
I thank him for all the research that has enriched
My understanding of psychotherapy,
All the contributions he has made to methodology
Which helped me escape the strait jacket of positivism.
The development of a revolutionary form of humanistic therapy,
Which has expanded my consciousness of possibility,
The moments of friendship I and Karen have shared
With him and Diane.
If my life were a tapestry, hung somewhere in a
Mythical corridor of a mythical inner museum,
And it is, there would be all these experiences
Painted in, from the years 1989 to the present.
Like those old tapestries that told a story.
He has enriched my life story.
And now the show moves forward.
Time grows short. In some places hopes for the future grow dim.
The future looks darker.
Still, as we venture into the unknown
I am glad to have him and Diane as traveling companions.
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