Watching your turned back disappear

this morning, head stooped

beneath the black omen of your umbrella

ferrying you towards your day,

we parted as though in different streams

of the same dark river,

I began to think about those physicists

who would have us believe

there are infinite versions of ourselves,

going this way and that,

carried like scattered blossom

on the unending current of time,

where presumably two of us didn’t part today

but stubbornly carried on hand in hand,

winding through this city and

steering clear of our obligations,

In that small rebellious way

we often did when we first met.

As we sit alone later this morning

I will raise my coffee to these unseen travelers

and whatever tributary they found

that brought us back to one another.