Déjà Vu

Déjà Vu

The sun was a vortex of lightness
In the grays of the streaming sky.
The waves on the river reflected
The shades that were churning on high.

I could see that in Queens it was raining.
In the distance, I'd seen a bright flash
And I'd waited to hear then the thunder
But I'd waited in vain for that crash.
 
For I was a passenger, riding
On the train on the bridge in its arc,
On that train that was hurtling from Brooklyn
To Manhattan’s own caverns of dark.

It had roared from the shoreline of Brooklyn,
On the rails that the columns held high,
And then it had clattered through tunnels
To emerge to that bridge and that sky.

I had heard that a storm was approaching
And I looked at that sky and that stream
And I sensed that the world was in motion—
And that this had been part of a dream.

It seemed that I’d seen this in dreaming—
That all this had happened before,
But that train and that storm and that river—
They were not in that dream anymore.
 
How wide was that gray-green of streaming—
That serpent that slid to the sea!
I looked at that wind-ruffled river
And wondered how all this could be.
 
The sky and the river receded.
We were diving back down to the dark.
Like the dream and that storm on that crossing—
This was part of my journey—my arc.
 
2016 October 6th, Thu.
Brooklyn, New York