Last week, I got an email from a long-time friend, Hugh Hardcastle. The person who will be speaking at his church on February 11 wanted members of the congregation to write a poem about love, and Hugh shared his offering:

Journey of Love

In the beginning all excitement and starry eyes

Boundless joy and wonder and the opening of vulnerability

Compromises and accommodations emerge as daily realities

Sometimes enriching, sometimes challenging

The substance of life, a bedrock of Love.

A togetherness and forgiveness encircle as we age.

Familiar habits, strengths we rely on, annoyances we tolerate

The wonderful bonds that allow real freedom for each

Forged over so many years and now a quiet joy

As we share the final years of life.

Hugh’s exquisite poem got me to thinking about the many forms of love. There’s the love between a man and a woman, of course, but also between two members of the same sex or simply between two good friends, just as strong, just as real. And, of course, the love for a child or a grandchild. As the romantic poet William Wordsworth wrote, “Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

Tina and I loved Chowder, our irrepressible black lab, the best wedding present we received. No tribute to Chowder would be complete without a reference to his eclectic diet, which included delicacies ranging from frozen rats, dead pogies and chicken bones to brie from a neighbor’s porch or a ham sandwich from a picnicker’s hand. While those were annoyances we (and others usually) tolerated, they were outweighed by his warm affection, providing his hip for a pillow when I lied on the floor while watching television or being careful not to wake up Tina during the months she was getting chemotherapy when I was away on a business trip. We were both basket cases for months after he died in 2001.

My granddaughter Karis thought I was joking when I told her we had a black lab puppet on our bed, so she insisted on going upstairs to see it with her own eyes.

Consider all the things we say we “love” and sometimes we really do! I love coffee and mince pie and compelling songs and hard-fought athletic contests. But is that really “love?” Probably not, but passion for the little offerings give life more meaning, more zest.

Americans have a love affair with professional football if TV ratings can be believed. Many football fans wanted the Detroit Lions to make it to the Super Bowl, because they’d never done so. But their devoted fans can look forward to next year with real hope. Actually, I loved the Red Sox and was ecstatic when they finally won the World Series in 2004. I was even more thrilled that my dear friend and former college roommate Clark Truesdell got to see “his” Red Sox triumph before he died the next spring. Hugh and I contribute to the Clark Truesdell Quiet Leader Fund at Bowdoin College every December in lieu of a material Christmas gift. There are countless ways to express love.

At a recent discussion at my St. Paul’s Men’s Group, the topics were God and “Do we have free choice or is everything part of ‘God’s plan?’” And so, on and on.

I don’t know whether there is a God, but if God is love then God exists. One can sense God (or some higher being) in nature if one but takes the time to look around.

I recall growing up as a boy in West Virginia and some gossipy girl would come over and tell me that (NAME OF GIRL) loves you. Maybe I was supposed to do something with that information, but I wouldn’t because I was embarrassed, not flattered, bashful not brazen.

As I was writing this column, Tina interrupted to show me a letter from a then “boyfriend” written to her when she was a teenager way back in the mid-50s.

Dear Tina,

Sorry I didn’t write before this. I still like you for a girlfriend. I have one other girlfriend, but you probably have one to (sic). Your (sic) one of the prettiest girls I know of. I don’t blame you for not saying hi. I felt the same way about saying hi to you. Those boys that were with me would have teased me.

XO

Love, Tommy

So, give it up for love — at any age, at any time, in any form.

David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary and suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns at dtreadw575@aol.com.

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