Presque Vu

There surely has to be a different sort of life but we simply cannot quite see

For there were brief periods when we felt that we were almost a part of it

A different sort of time, now ignored by us all, in our frantic rushes

Perhaps it still flows somewhere, unnoticed in the background

There can be no guides prepared by any industry to help us catch a glimpse

Just as well as most of us run blindly, nearly all the time

Though sensed peripherally for instants, it is quickly shrugged away

And we are carried on again by this vapid stream of daily lives

Outside of the phony cacophony raised over shiny baubles that are held for sale

During the brief and quiet moments in which we find the time to think

Possibly there was a vision of lives based on a different set of values

Where the sounds of diesel motors do not awaken our small children

I might have heard of a place where one listens as birds call out the coming dawn

A place where a quiet people dwell who make a slow but steady progress

Perhaps waking troubled in the night, there had been a clue

Clearly, we had seen most issues but never known quite how to face them

Maybe sleepers such as we, out walking, stumbled seeing merely our own dreams

Sometimes almost wakened, disturbed as we lurched and cast about

It seems there might have been, at times, a message left in a shaft of light

Or some trace of meaning disappearing beyond a distant ridge

Was that it there in memories of quiet farms seen from the road?

Or did I see something glimmering in the sunset waters off that lake?

I wondered why I thought that I remembered things I knew I had never seen

I did know why the way I really lived had often lead to tears

There seemed to be a message in the snowflakes that fell from all directions

Deciphering such things might have helped me to grasp what I had felt

What was that which dissolved around the corner, up ahead in the dusk?

From whence came that comforting illusion of another people in other towns?

Perhaps it was not just some advertising music and the scenery of marketing

That message almost read which came on the warm winds of early May

Driven in a hurry with the other rodents, nonetheless, were there not some moments?

Just the same, sometimes a sense of calm - amid that great confusion?

Was there not the sound of quiet music almost played and just about enjoyed?

I think I may once have started to believe, but I cannot quite remember

Many times I snapped my head back but what it might have been, was gone

But, nonetheless, I even have the memories of what I thought I saw

It seemed always to be present in the ruins of where they dwelled so long ago

Something synthesized only in our minds, many came to believe

In the blue light of the winter it came so strong that we commenced to howl

Then, straining in our excitement, we absorbed the vaster silence

Beneath the green lake waters diving, something scattered with small fish

But left my head to pop like a bubble through the surface once again

Perhaps in the quiet of a pre-dawn coolness, I saw something linger

Totally forgotten or cruelly ridiculed in the harsh light of modern life

Sometimes it suffused the very air and my coat would bristle

Too often only half-baked memories lent me precious little comfort

Maybe when birds were singing and light first began to form new shadows

Still, roaring once again, that real and terrible certainty returned in full

Watching as the trout rose taking the peaceful twilight long ago in Spring

Brute repetition finally teaches us that there is but only one true way

In the first few minutes from a summit with a view not easily obtained

Too easily our minds simply return to their deeply-rutted track

In the velvet night, what was this spectral image that may have paid a call?

But wait, no doubt can exist regarding the time spent beneath the wheel

When the snow fell yet again upon older snow, was that some somber power?

The endless stream of empty chatter quickly brings us back online

Something that kept returning despite all of what I thought I knew

Somewhere I cannot take you, whereof we both know different scattered details

From a dignified spruce, boughs outstretched, in a quiet meadow

It’s very grace, for just a moment, the most palpable of things

What was that state of mind about? Brought on by gentle music

But quickly lost in the sweat and dust and the hoarse shouting of many days

Was there not a hidden message in the patterns of the clouds at sunset?

Maybe without all the other foolish distractions, I just might have discerned

We can only hope that it is not just a pathetic illusion or by-product of the hype

That a certain set of circumstances might at last bring it clearly to the light