You are the depths and sturdy endurance,
            I am the heights and far-seeing eyes.
            You show my silent heart the way to grieve:
            Your sobs rend the air where mine cannot cry.
            As a mountain is barren without its trees,
            As a jewel that is lifeless without the sun,
            So we are lessened when we are apart -
            It was meant for our two paths to be one;
            One friendship.

            You are stability, your heart deeply rooted
            Among the unchanging earth and stone,
            I am the living and breathing and moving
            I know the sorrow of being left alone,
            By the passing of loved ones swiftly aging,
            I know the passage of seasons and time.
            You give me a sense of something that lasts,
            I give you a glimpse of the patterns of time;
            Of loving that lives.

            You are undaunted, ploughing down deep
            While I walk ever soft, lightly overhead,
            You show me a different beauty in things,
            Of beauty and love and art, passion-fed
            I would have never seen or known them without you.
            We complement each other and so we are strengthened:
            A bright shining flame and an iron torch,
            Clear running water and a marble fountain,
            The Stars and the Earth.

            Yours is the darkness, the quiet of the depths,
            With sunlight used as an artist would a brush,
            Carefully admitted to highlight the stone,
            To the graven masterpiece a final crowning touch.
            Mine is the daylight, the brightness in the leaves,
            The varied shapes of nature, the manner of their growing.
            The flowing of the woods with random flecks of light,
            The sunlight is to me all my sustenance and being.
            We join the dark and the bright.

            Your life is from the earth, expressed in shapes of stone,
            My life is from the sun and sky, the woodlands and the air.
            With you beside me, we are sunlight on a jewel,
            Your beauty revealed in my shining by you, fair,
            Mine strengthened and reflected among your shadows, bright,
            Though few can understand how we complete one another;
            And they stare at us in wonder as we walk the city streets.
            They have never seen such an Elf and Dwarf together;
            They have never seen
            Two such friends.

A. Buckles / '03