I first see you coming

out of Deja Views,

wearing the livery

of a Roman centurion,

so flash you the signs

for ave and vale.

If I remember correctly,

you've just come back from

the Crucifixion Tour, and

will now enter a brief

conversion that will last

until you cash in your frequent

travel years and visit

the Crusades.

Later, give or take a millennium,

in the food court next

to Chronautica, we share lunch,

watching as both older

and younger isotypes

depart or return from Dallas, Mecca,

Hiroshima, carrying souvenirs carefully

evaluated as time-neutral

and therefore of no consequence

to historicity

or perhaps it's they who

watch us (in any given plague

of döppelgangers it's hard to tell),

like flies in amber,

brief Brownian specks in the

matrix of yesterday and tomorrow

fugueing and minueting, but

no one of us ever quite

forgetting the faltering clock

that underbeats every second

of the here and now, and which

no machine can countermand

forever.

At least, pre-death, we can

still haunt each other.