Another Kind of Déjà Vu

There are moments when I’m caught

By the scruff of the neck

Not by the feeling that I

Have been here before,

But that we all have,

Or a good many of us, anyway.

It’s a feeling of being removed

From the cloying shell of my self,

So that for a moment,

I’m anyone, or everyone.

Anyone who has ever driven

On a late November night,

And reached up to change the radio—

There, with my hand outstretched,

And the headlights on,

I could be anyone, on their way

To anywhere.

When the leaves spiral to the ground,

Determined to hold me a breathless hostage,

I am standing where everyone has stood

Since leaves first fell

And humans first watched

Their dizzying descent with awe.

I am all of us, returning to, or else

Continuing the same moment.

We are not all the same;

Not exactly, no, and yet

We have all been in the same moments

Done the very same things

And so to some degree, I think

We have all occupied one another

This collective consciousness

That has by chance divided you from me

And her from him and him from them,

We move through one another,

Just as light moves through us,

And we move through time

Distinct, inseparable, entwined.