Opening Moments

I enjoy sitting next to old TJ's tombstone

Whenever I get a chance inbetween times

I take my watch off my wrist

And slip it into my pocket

I look up into the tall green oak trees

And the blue skies with the wind blowing

The tall white columns stand silently

Like old, weather worn megaliths

Across the green, people promenade in slow motion

The old red brick buildings surrounding

A small corner of American History remaining

It could be ten or twenty or even a hundred years before

The same sunshine that glints from the roof tops

Glinted there many times before

So many days long since passed and forgotten

People walk by, in a hurry to be in class

Oblivious of the same day

That went this way many times before

I sit by the water fountain

On a warm sunny day

The sound of the water spilling

In a continuous cascade

The white foam floating in its blue center

And the fine mist of the wind's spray

Catching a small piece of a rainbow

It calls me back to previous times

In previous years perhaps

Or maybe in previous lives

Something strangely familiar

About the vibrant confusion

A mood, a wisp of a feeling

The sun against the skin

The spray upon the cheek

The rhythm of the gurgling water

Carrying me back to other times

And other places

And though lonely in an anonymous crowd of students

I do not feel alone

In the company of my mysterious memory

I had a dream last night

In that dream I was in a desert

One that I had been in before

In other dreams

In other realities

I was quite familiar with the lay of the land

With the rising hills

And the low lying scrub

In the hills, there was a dwelling

Made of stone, cut back into the hillside

And I had known that dwelling

Many times before

I awoke from that dream

With a sense of having lived

In a different life

In a distant place and time

I walk along the sidewalks

In the late afternoon

The sun upon my back

The wind blowing gently across my face

Strange and subtle feelings

Begin to flow in the stillness within

Mysterious ghost feelings

Rise and subside

Deja vu of something sensed

Previously experienced

Another presence faintly-felt

A distant voice echoing

Within deep interior corridors

A nervous spasm of the knuckles

A slight pinching pain on the forearm

A twitching muscle in the eyelid

Something calling me back again

The focus of my attention

Vacillating between now and then

This and that

Slipping silently away again

From the moments immediate grasp

I recall a different sense of being

In a different body

In a different world

With the same sunshine and the same gentle wind

1994-5

Blanket Copyright, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.

Last Updated: 03/15/05