Alone on the riverbank
The water cool and clean and swift
Black waters and rapid current
A tenuous communion I cannot name
I have to believe that pain is the teacher
Unable to envision even the barest physical certainties
of the death of myself or those close to me
Living with constant pain
Sharp and thin like a needle
The haze of the forest in early November
An echo from the ageless hills
The quiet country of the past
where weeping is hushed and marches are ended
An apparition in the woodlands at dusk
Touching in thin rooms at dawn's low light
Imprisoned in the subjectivity of my memory
What else can there be?
Drunkenness and some vague lonely nostalgia
for something dead long before my birth
I have to believe that pain is the teacher