The End Cliche

I haven’t seen you for a while,
And haven’t thought about you
In a little while less but
At the end of the day,
End of the road, end of the line,
And millions of other clichés that
I’m pretty sure begin with end –
I’ve gone off again,
Tangents and other lines of thought.
It always irritated you, how
My mind could wander like
A lost hiker in the Peaks,
Examining the bluebells
While the avalanche inched closer.
And that was the end of the line for us
When the mountain came down.
I remember the fight, remember
The clip of your knuckles on my temple,
Remember the pitch of your voice
But not the words you said, but
I expect that I deserved them all the same.
It doesn’t bother me much, these days,
These days don’t have the same suns
And moons and stars in the night.
The sky is different here, the horizon
A different line to the one before.
It’s scarred and bumped,
Marred with hills and valleys
And foggy ridges and misty peaks
And silent, snow-capped giants in the distance
That spark thunderstorms in the night
That don’t disturb us down here.
It’s a different world now, that I can see,
And it really doesn’t bother me
That you and I went our separate ways.
That’s the price we had to pay,
And though I wonder sometimes how your life passed,
What you’re doing, whether you can see a similar moon
Or if yours is the same that we watched
Five summers ago, harvest and orange and alien –
I wonder but really, in the end,
Where we were and where we are, different forks
Of the same first path, in the end:
It really doesn’t bother me.