Encounter

Maggie Vandewalle

Encounter

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.

A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.

One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,

Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going

The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

 Czeslaw Milosz

Oh this poem - this poem captures the shocked incredulity we feel that a moment and movement and person so alive, so vivid in memory could be gone. Where are they? Where do they go? How could they simply "not be"? It is beyond comprehension. A mystery we go over and over.