It Requires Knowing One Poem by D.W. Good

It requires knowing one, this business of living, one out of them all,
Them being the numberless people you saw as the search endured
For the one, the mirror for the soul or light casting obelisk built for you,
The one true muse everlasting through the fog of years gone by,

And you, all the while, rushing to it or waiting with heart breaking
But the hurt was half the fun and what mattered was the one.
The one whose smile would haunt when you surrendered until, bearing it no more,

You leapt out of your fog for long enough to see that the sun had not set
And you, you were not through with your searching for the one.
So you looked and saw numberless people stretched all along the road beset

For you, numberless people resembling none meant for you, nothing like the one.
So it was in time that the one, the phantom, the savior, would elude and implore you,
Madden you with need and assail you with want as hope waned with the years gone by.

So it seems that the one fades from reality, alike your dreams and your memories,
Those Aging relics of the soul, their sweetness long since fermented, the tragedies of time
And you will not stop aching until the end, with or without the one.