I am both pilgrim and detective -
A kind of penitent Poirot -
Sifting through muddy reality
In search of a woman - THE woman.

She appears to me from time to time;
Glimpses abound in those around me.
A riddle unsolved, a question unasked;
In love with what I cannot see.

We may even have met already.
Something missed at the time may grow
And consume - a glance, a polite word;
Some hidden gem revealed by time.

Her nature, like her face, eludes me.
Is she some noirish Nemesis,
With omnipresent cigarette haze
And the knell of doom in her heel-clack?

Or the timid nerd of the high school,
Revealed as a radiant beauty
Sans horn-rims, ponytail and books
(On reflection, that's probably me).

Shall we be tragic starstruck lovers,
Cut off in the peak and prime of love
To become a cliché for journalists
And poets immune to irony?

Or perhaps she is all of these things
Arrayed in sublime splendour,
Shifting dreamlike through modes of being
Which illuminate each other.

Besides, I am surely mistaken.
It is a poet's weakness in me:
Reducing his imagined beloved
To convenient literary types.

Just as well: moulds are tedious
No-one worth knowing fits into one
(My apologies to moulded readers -
You are probably happier than I).

Yet, without knowledge, I know her
Even as I search tirelessly.
For I know everything about her
(Save only her identity).