Remembrance of Things Past

A leafy haze, a quiet lake
With gold and crimson all around.
A jay calls from a distant wood.
No other sound.

Like Aladdin floating in the sky,
I drift and watch the world below,
Where unsuspecting fish glide by
And chara forests grow.
Beneath my silent drifting boat
A muskrat makes his homeward way.
I’m caught in Time’s hypnotic web,
Each minute seems a day.

Now fifty years have flown away
And most is broken memory,
But why does this come back to me
Of all that I have known?

Did Time cast its hypnotic spell
So nothing can erase the lake,
October’s gold and crimson shore,
The muskrat, jay, and drifting boat
While mind still holds its store?
For at some sign — a leaf, perhaps —
I see them as before.