Separate Ways

(written for someone in the past)

The landscape is just not big enough
for both of us, I see.
You go that way, I go mine.
With separate maps we shall not
pay gut thread behind us.
We'll arrive at the same places,
perhaps use the same paths and turnings,
separately lured by the same
primordial amplitudes and silences we love.
Pinnacles, bedrock, harbor heads,
cliff dwellings, tumbleweed hinterlands,
waterfalls, canyons and forests
will wound us with the grit
and hesitancies of impermanence.
At the end of the road
when we come across each other
again, we'll have stories to inflict
on the other without delay.
We shall drink to each other's absence
We shall leave no stone unturned,
spare no momentous and take no compliments.
We shall leave the feeling between us
a howling wilderness.
We'll be at a loss for words, love,
but we shall have peace.