The Everchanging Self

by WALTER MACMILLAN

The hillside speaks in waves of
branches back and forth,
reciting lines of all the signs you left,
I left ignored

Roads travelled since, rose-lined,
Parallel and long.
Through the separating space
I see your life pass on.

I didn’t love you then in the way
that I do now – with regret
of what could have been, no doubt,
the fantasy that I project

Respond with fear of words unsaid, in tears
misunderstood as earned from loss by some
but I do not deserve the pitied
agony of love

Oak frames the white above.
Fallen leaves burnt by sun.
The orange sea no longer here
from when you and I were young.

Thawed the frozen thought of
how it was back then.
You seem the same but memories without me
changed you, past what I can mend.

Close my eyes to purify
the vision that I’ve held,
but all I see is the waterfall
of the everchanging self.