Footfalls

Your footfalls recede,
To some place or time
I cannot hope to know or be,
Only this pointer,
The sound of silence
Tells me this absence is real.
I wonder where and what
Must you be?
Perhaps in noble servitude,
An axis rooted, to the centre
Of a spin around which
Infinite lives revolve,
Or perhaps in selfish freedom,
On a flight to dissolve
Your sense of being
Into an immensity
You cannot hold,
Or perhaps you are this,
My dying memory of you,
When caught in a dialogue
On self and non-self,
Your understanding failed
And you chose to escape the shame
By drowning in the river of Lethe.

6/9/2007