Embarking

Down the path of forgetting
you dug your feet in the sand-pit
for awhile
and then dragged your feet to leave in the wake
a path in the mud , a track still wet; too wet to follow in the slush.
The night when you came to say adieu to all
was yet innocent of the portents.
 They were as loud and clear as you wanted them  to be.
But the revelers were still in the throes of the after-effect of the
song you sang that night.
 Forgetting was the burden of your song
and pain was the heart of the rhyme.
Moving aside from the reveling crowd, I saw the shadow
fleeting like a deadly air
of the thought of our mortality
in the midst of what seemed immortal
in that lasting hour
of love that Time was to translate as fear.
You saw the reaper at the rim of the ripened field
and I saw the harvester come
to bind in sheaf and to stack away
the love of the bountiful times.
You just whispered your message and went away.
"You don't know me", you said. "I am something else.
I have to go and embark on my ship tomorrow.
I am packing; I am going because I have to go"
Where was the harbor, where the jetty, where the sea whose waves you rode;
ever a mystery for me.