I thought to myself, “I have a haunting feeling
I’ll be passing this way again.”
But what if I were to take a different path
to get here and then from here onward,
yet another. Could you be with me?
Sometimes not a thing moves. The winter breeze is
dead still
and the sun drenched rain drops on the pine boughs
are suspended in the silent cold.
An imperceptible slipping of the sky
makes the earth seem
like a dull colored rock
in the slow rolling river
of passing time.
The soldiering minds of the businessmen
are far off in concrete cartons
and I am supposed to be there.
But instead I’m hidden in the woods
with poets and muses.
I listen for you among the voices of
the lovers in the woods. I watch
along the edge of where the fire light can reach
to see your colors appear
in the flickering amber.
If you cannot be where I am now, then
I shall imagine myself in another place
and another time
where you can be.
And so we play out the fantasy
with such intricacy and passion until
we turn catatonic; and slide
into the frozen scenery.
I relive the decades and rewalk the path
with you, a familiar stranger,
by my side. I did not know of you then,
but I think you were walking toward a fire
in the clearing. I might have seen you.
You were thinking, “I have a feeling
I’ve passed this way before.”
And the poets in the woods sing,
“How many journeys more
will our unfinished stories endure?
Could these limbs ever stir again?
Our last night of remembering,
come beloved and be the wind.”
