I met my self
while walking home last night
along a dark, October road,
lined with leafless trees,
swept by a coarse wind,
smelling of approaching snow.

I met my self
and knew he was but a ghost,
a resonance of past illusion,
an echo of concepts and constructs
needed for a time, perhaps…

I thought to rejoin him,
imagined, for a moment,
that, on a night such as this,
I'd find comfort and warmth
in the company of the familiar.
I could hide, once again, in my imagined self.

But I felt the present–
darkness, wind, cold–
alive, full–
begin to fade,
and recognized the love of  here, now.
I passed by,
glanced at the disappointment in his face.
A few steps beyond, I turned;
he had vanished.

He was not now,
nor had he ever been,
real.

The October night and I
journeyed on.

Text and
image © 2013 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.