Their Times Have Passed Me By

Time has passed me by

And I cannot really say that I was sorry to see it go

Time has passed right on by me

But I have been OK with missing out on all the latest fads

I think that maybe now I am slowly walking down a country lane

Instead of being stuck in traffic on a smoggy super highway

I even sat quietly in the shade for a dozing interval

and thought for just a moment that I might not be losing any time

It took a while but the times have passed on by me

now their confused dust is disappearing beyond my event horizon

I’m not in tune with the early adapters

I wear and repair a lot of stuff that’s secondhand

I’m not buying new cars, fast food, colas, snacks or taking out any loans

The advertising target on my back has pretty much worn right off

The beautiful people cannot even see me behind their expensive sunglasses

Movers and shakers in a hurry easily look right on through me

I listened to the birds and not the markets just the other morning

Haven’t had that tiny and insulting 1.5% salary adjustment for several years now

I’m daydreaming on the sidelines with my helmet off as the clock runs down

Not anxiously awaiting another dream vacation I cannot afford and will not remember

Content to be cut off in the slow lane and watch the power drivers roar on by

Not quite so sure the future is still brighter than the past that I came from

Cast ashore for good by social waves as their dirty, teeming river hurries by

Not picking up the kids or meeting some prospect for an expensive power lunch

My rapid advance towards as yet unconsidered goals has slowed down to a crawl

Now as I regurgitate their sound bites, people say I sound a bit sarcastic

To the masters of the universe, I’m a useless deadbeat who pays his credit card on time

Caught up in the gears of progress I feel lucky to have been spit out while still alive

So now, somehow, I’ve eddied out for a moment just as I approach that unavoidable abyss

Thank god they spun me off and passed me by for this brief instant before our eternal nothing

Wisdom In Small Waters

In the mossy rocks along the bottom of a stream that we watch gently glide

There is another world than the one from which we stand upon this bank

Down in the depths where light fades to only green and blue

The stones hold cold secrets left them by the melting snows

Underneath the surface, currents come and go with the seasons

Just as the sound of running water is different through the ice

The streams where we waded as children were old long before our time

They had polished many pebbles and undercut their green and spongy banks

In the deep pools where eddies ripple, the stream still pauses to reflect

In the weedy backwaters, the overflow irrigates wherever it collects

Behind the beaver dams tiny reservoirs are managed yet today

The wetlands hold the moisture until they freeze thru once again

This small creek spins different versions of its many tales, all at once

The wind strokes the grasses that thrive in the moist soil by the water

People come and go but the water keeps rolling on from somewhere

Behind a resting boulder the large trout fans in its soothing eddy

Though moving in many directions all the water still ends up together

Tiny wavelets lap the shore in a diorama of the entire cosmos

In the shade of a tree on the bank it is cool on the hottest summer day

Though restless and ever-changing that brook is clearly timeless

Passing over rocks it is smoothing, the water takes a deep and cleansing breath

It gurgles happily like a long and purring cat twisting on its back

Sometimes in spring, between its slurping, you can hear it knocking stones

Such small waters might bring a short and unaccustomed peace to a wandering folk

I Got Away By Some Unconscious Grace

It was surely nothing that I could have done, at least not with this puny conscious effort

I was simply borne along like a tiny fallen leaf which started down upon one little stream

Delivered far away from the roots of the tree that bore myself and many others

And as luck would have it, my life was pretty easy, though surely not filled with good

I got away, but I really haven’t a clue as to how - Or much, much less, just why

Awoke in safety at a distance, washed up in honest surprise and amazed gratitude

So filled with happiness by the anonymous mercy that tears swelled my eyes

No way this blind and stumbling random walk I had just pursued got me here on my own

Yes, I did see the innocent masses lined up barefoot, dirty, sickened and hungry

But, someway, somehow, I was never chosen to shuffle along silently among them

I got away, but never did I even have a clue as to where I might be fleeing

Looking back I saw so many fatal accidents I had so narrowly and mysteriously avoided

Not through goodness, mercy, charity or selflessness did I find myself living like some king

It seems as though protected by an unseen guiding hand when viewed in this fuzzy retrospect

But that same hand bore down upon my comrades for their whole time from birth to death

All of us as fated, as if by chance, like any fragile butterfly, tossed in winds and storms

Like the one of a hundred million salmon fry that somehow returned to spawn

My life a series of mostly unseen and un-noticed Just In Times and By A Single Threads…

Venal and ugly as I was, it appeared as if my shortsighted greed was always rewarded

Others explained their random motions in this great entropy as being blessed or even great

I burned with that one tree within thousands of mountain acres where lightning struck

My amazing, unexpected, skin of the teeth upset was pulled off with no time remaining

A drunk laughing and singing in the high-speed wreckage wrapped around that large tree

Letting dumb luck fill my selfish ego with a fictional sense of divine entitlement

Inexplicably expelled by the roaring torrent, I peacefully observe from this quiet eddy

I got away by the unconscious grace of the same blind forces that steered us one and all

My tiny efforts within the maelstrom could not have hoped to produce this wondrous effect

Like a miracle baby found unharmed amid vast death and wreckage, I simply smile

Tossed by unimaginable forces that I could not see, I made up an explanation as I went along

Just as unforeseen as the dragonfly on my bumper, I still take pride in my great strength

Too full of myself to notice the great emptiness in total control of my irrelevant destiny

Laughably worrying that I had time to waste, I raced about leaving tiny, ephemeral tracks

I got away into this safe and quiet place for a bit of contemplation at the common brink

Having evaded the normal life of poverty and suffering, I still hear their muffled cries

I marvel at how it all happened, even as my confusion over why grows ever stronger

Briefly holding this still life of an insignificant instant in a nano-sized corner of the multiverse