You Were

You Were

I am the individual standing in the rain,

invisible beside you. I am the individual in the dirt

which now is turning to mire around my feet.

I am the single weighed down by each of our partings

and the single lifted up by each meeting,

reachings that could not be complet that

nevertheless held up the force of their craving for food

And, yes, you were always a seeking, an unknown,

a mystery to me And not les than I to myself

beginner that I have become all above again

on the paths and mountain oblique directions of this journey.

I watch my mind watch each point of time in its passage,

it fades into, commingles with what came before.

Nothing remains as it was in the mind

after the path has been seen and walked on

there is always the nearest thing arriving

as if from behind, catching up with one's sight,

surrounding. And all the while the snows of memory

are falling, covering the roads of the near

The past overflows this trice without meaning to,

just as your face is more real in my remembering

than this at hand one sitting next to me

just as each of us harm the other without

intending it. And after a time we meditation

experience might bring us to calm, and we diocese

we are standing in the river of passing,

each waiting for the warmth of the other's face,

unable to understand on what account they are not with us,

startled by means of their absence, traveler and traveler

distant as sum of two units dots unconnected in a golden field.

WILLIAM KISTLER'S fourth volume of poems, Notes Drawn From the River of Ecstasy, was published in igg8. "You Were" is from a work-in-progress-Memories and Other Visions From the volume of Sight.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated May/Jun 1999

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