climbing cold mountain

what will i find
if i find you alone
as i am,
as i am myself
in facing mirrors.
i can ford your flooding
muscled streams.
i can find my footing
on your cracking frozen mosses.
but what will i find
if my hands and feet and eyes
cannot know
what path will lead?
and where will a path lead
that is not made by my own shadow?
i can wade your flexing streams
and make fists around your slick reeds
but when day long fog finds me out
i am lost at last
i find nothing
but myself
in facing mirrors,
the stream on Talula's face.

august 7ish, 2006