Encounters
It seemed in dreams, as shadows we convene,
two drifting souls that meet yet never stay;
was it mere thought, or something sensed between?
You shifted shape, then softly slipped away,
and I, half-waking, felt you passing through—
an echoed word I almost heard you say.
Life is a blur, a stage of borrowed view,
where players speak their lines, then fade like steam;
we walk our parts, unsure of what is true.
When do we rise, or enter in the dream
that binds our steps in threads we cannot see,
held fast in webs of soft uncertainty?
Essential truths slip past, unwilling, free;
we act the roles the fates in silence cast,
then bow and leave with calm fatality.
It’s destiny that brands us as we pass,
leaving uncanny marks that still remain;
a spark unseen ignites the grieving glass.
We are not what we seem in joy or pain,
for dreams compel our gestures in the night,
and life itself makes dreaming live again.
With silent screams our flames exhaust their light,
we search for signs in ash’s muted glow,
still hoping for a signal through the blight.
We meet in dreams, yet waking never know
how brief the gleam that lets our spirits blend—
a brilliant stream that gives, then bids us go.
Back-to-back souls, so near yet at each end,
we brush like ghosts, too fragile to draw near;
we almost speak, yet neither dares to bend.
And so we turn in opposite light, austere,
wave once across the thinning atmosphere—
blow one last kiss… then quietly disappear.
Scharlie Meeuws, a poet born in Germany, began writing at a young age. She studied in Spain and France, writing poems in Spanish and French before settling in England, where she co-owns Thorntons Bookshop, the oldest in Oxford. Scharlie’s poetry has been featured in magazines and anthologies, including the Guardian. Her work was recognized by Nobel Prize winner Vicente Aleixandre. Her most recent book is The Emotional Robot and Other Poems. Her poetry book Outbranching was published by Cerasus, London in 2021 and is available on Amazon.
Haunting and ethereal. A poem you can keep coming back to and find new layers of meaning every time.
The speaker says, “You” to the person or spirit encountered only in the second stanza. Afterward, the poem is a reflection spoken by someone who seems to be a single voice, though speaking about “we.” Is this a complaint about evanescence of the other? But in the end, both “drifting souls” disappear. The effect of all three lines rhymed there is one of apparently destined finality. And wonder concerning all human encounters.
Dear Margaret,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reading. You’ve caught the essence beautifully. The “you” was meant to be both a personal and a universal presence — that fleeting spark of recognition we sometimes feel when paths cross, whether in life or spirit.
The later shift to “we” marks a widening of awareness — a merging of identities. For a moment, the encounter dissolves the boundaries between self and other, suggesting that all who meet are part of a shared current of being. “We” becomes a chorus of human experience, a recognition that the transient and the eternal coexist in every exchange.
It isn’t so much a complaint about impermanence as it is an acceptance of it — how even the most meaningful encounters fade, leaving behind only wonder and the quiet sense that we are, for an instant, one. The rhymed ending was meant to echo that stillness, that drifting away into what remains unsaid.
Thanks for your own comment, Scharlie, about your endeavor here. I am reminded of these plain and poignant lines from Samuel Menashe, “There is never enough/Time to know another.”
A lovely expression of what life could have been for two yearning souls.
Sometimes we try to make sense of the paths we cross in life, yet which then diverge forever, often with us not realising the finality at the time. You have expressed this feeling superbly, Scharlie.
This poem is truly mesmerizing, demanding careful re-reading. I love the imagery you’ve used to describe these fleeting, fading encounters: “drifting”; “echoes”; “blur”; “fade like steam”; “held fast in webs of soft uncertainty”; “Ash’s muted glow”; “thinning atmosphere”. These images weave the poem together, like the “threads we cannot see”.
Thank you Cynthia. I feel that you are understand what I was writing about. You got the right feeling for my poem. The great mystery of arrival and departure.
It is lovely to be understood.
You paradoxically convey haunting, ethereal imagery in clear, unambiguous language — in finely wrought terza rima. The subject demands a poem, yet I cannot think of another that quite approaches the same subject you address here. This is not love or friendship cut short by tragedy, but a relationship never fated to be — so close in space and time, yet worlds apart. I love what you do with it. A thought-provoking work on many levels.
Thank you very much, Adam! I appreciate your kind thoughtful words to my poem.
Expressing deep feelings in a non-cliché way, does not come easy. I am grateful that you think I have succeeded….