Hand in Hand.

I have walked the same quiet path
So many, many times.

Felt the breeze from off the lake.
Looked up into a clear night sky.
Admirred the bright shining stars.
Unmarred by the haze of city lights.
Hurried with quickened pace,
Past the cemetery gates.

Felt the staring eyes.
In that dark spot where the streetlights end.
Down the hill, past the last house, into the solitude.
Shrouded in the un-silence of an empty country road.
Around the final bend that looks back out upon the highway.

The seasons changed.
Winter to Spring, Summer to Fall.
You changed over the years.
Different faces, different names.
I brought all of you here.

Those of you that I believed mattered to me.
Those of you I thought I loved.
If not for the being of you.
Then for the wanting itself.
I do not pretend that love is a word,
I have ever properly understood.
I doubt that I was made with the capability to comprehend it.
The capacity to be contented by it.
Created as I was in this way.
Still, like the fantasy of faith, I sought for it.

Always down that same quiet path.
Traveled many, many times.