Round the bend

At this time
change felt like the fog rolling in
and when driving into the road mirage
and not hitting a thing-

in a blur that stranges the familiar,
stretches out time a little
like a band,
rubber or air-the change

lingered heavier than mist,
more solid than virga,
icy in all the same clear ways that
when you try to cut it out

from what was always
called Now I am-
like routine and rut,
running along the edges fray,
more than decor, drapery, or flax
like flux, anticipated
or a natural change
of season.

It could have been
Only that-

At this time,
comforts naked shoulder
cooled in the exposure,

where same,
felt somehow strange
like never before.





Image credit By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.