soulmate notes

after I confessed the depth of my interest in you

I heard you say what you need right now are friends
so it was fun to be your drinking buddy for a night

there's just one thing you said next
that has reverberated in my musings

and that is how you could see
responding to the arrival of your soulmate
and the clarity of that in your life

having already established the friendship thing
I understood you to mean you don't see me in that way

(and is it a feeling, a perception, a knowing, a certainty, a timing?
are there soulmate prerequisites and a manual you can point me to?)

I guess there are other possible interpretations as well
a challenge to keep away the ne'er-do-well
and the faint-of-heart
those unwilling to climb into the lion's den for you

and as usual something arrived for me to say
only about eight hours delayed

__________________

I wouldn't have approached you
with my interest...

if we hadn't shared conversations
synchronistic from the start

if the first hadn't seen you arrive at the end of a paragraph
searching for a word which I filled in
having written a poem about it that day

if the second hadn't been when I spoke about
my connection to raven
and you of your raven clan membership

if in the third where you spoke of the domestic dream
of husband, family and land
along with your growing doubt about it arriving
all of which I know so well

if you hadn't continued on paralleling my world
about your commitment to now turn to that
instinct you have carried to instead
offer healing to the world

if there hadn't also been times we have
been together and not conversed also

if I hadn't twice so enjoyed cooking for you
or twice played music you danced to

if we hadn't shared quiet time on a hike
or I hadn't attended to your tears

________________________

I've been wrong before
and maybe it's already too heavy to pursue

I don't know if these matters are preordained
or consciously decided upon and chosen

or emerge from a mutual commitment
to awaken one's vision to such a possibility

I don't know if I would know immediately
or by any particular point in time

and while I lean toward taking it all more lightly
amidst this negotiable sometimes-shared
lasagne known as reality

I guess that my heart must be opening
for two ravens circle serenely together today outside my window
and fool that I am I suddenly cry

is it too late to say it:
I wouldn't have approached you with my interest...

if I didn't think we might be
soulmates