He Knew Without Knowing

 

He walked through the woods;

the silence was full of its absence

with the distant call of the owl and the flicker.

The soft earth yielded to his footfall,

and the leaf of the elm and the ash

felt cool and soft as living flora do.

 

He immediately felt the moment

might mean nothing -- no more or less

than the past or tomorrow.

 

It has no name, the singular time

of feeling the cool leaf and hearing the owl,

there is no frame of time that caches it

as if in a grasp of space and moment

that means anything more

than the touch and feel of the leaf.

 

He thought this odd, that time

could be caught in an error of existence,

that it could mean no more

than looking at the swirl of cloud

and measuring that against

the feel of the leaf

or the hoot of the owl…..