Love is it’s own reward.

What is the matter with me?
I can’t see beyond my own misgivings.
Tell me the truth, if only once.

Who are you now?
Where did you go?
Should I follow, or should I seek my own path,
like some drunk seeking his redemption i
n the promise of no more, but not just yet?

What’s the deal?
What’s the catch?
What’s the price?

I think I need to be near running water.
I know that I need to listen to the emptiness
of the tender skin that used to be our souls.
I need to smell the air.

Like a leaf that curls from want of water,
my essence begs for the nourishment
that used to come from proximity.
There is a far thing that beckons.
There is a far thing that needs to be fed.

I need to till the earth.
I need to feel the warmth of the summer sun.
I need to see things grow.
I need to hear the words that hang in the air,
that have no substance other then themselves.

How shallow life has become.
Like water running over smooth stones,
it has become a gesture of movement,
with the hint of reality.

When I was young, there was always a sense
of how it would be, now there is the reality of how it is.
Who knew, then, that all of those fleeting moments
would never be fulfilled, that all of those promises
would never be brought to light,
except in these dark moments.

Time, it seems, has become the enemy,
rather than the solution of all things.
What I thought would be resolved has
become the bigger question.

There are no answers.

You with the face like rain.
You with the face like yesterday.
Where have I known you before?
When did we talk like the wind that
blows through the boughs of the dark pines
that surround our world?

In other times, our love was like the worn tires
of the old car that I used to drive, winding through
the streets of your town, always hoping that they would
last the journey, listening for the tell-tale sound that
love had gone flat, willing them that one last mile,
bringing me to you, not caring if I’d ever get home.

Funny, you said,
“I will always love you,” like some promise
that held onto one last bent note.
“I will always love you,” I would return,
looking past you, into the future uncertain,
wishing that there was some wall upon which
to hang that picture, but finding at hand no nail.

We have moved from the Spring, into the Summer
and then into the Winter of our love, a hard-scrabble
existence, clawing for reality, nibbling the last morsel
of passion that was once a feast.

I don’t regret it.
I don’t even feel slighted.
I don’t even feel like something has been missed,
there are so many other things to take its place.
Passion imagined, sounds to replace your voice,
sensations to replace your touch.
I am still whole.
I hope you are.
Whether or not you are is a concern,
but not an obsession.
We all make our own way.

When the flood comes,
I will still be your piece of wood,
you can still cling to me and survive.
When the fire comes, you will still be my water,
I will wait for you to quench the flames
with the mere certainty of your presence.
Of these things I’m sure, it’s just that
I don’t know what to do in the mean time,
except this.