At times I see them when I'm driving home from work on a back country road.

Glimpses of people walking across the path of my oncoming vehicle.

Legs and torso caught in mid-stride.

A disembodied head and shoulders, one arm waving as if to hail a taxi.

And then they're gone.

My car passes through them, past the places where they should have been, but weren't.

And I wonder if, in their time, in their world, in their moment, as they crossed their busy metropolitan street,

Or stood upon their concrete sidewalks window-shopping, they saw something too --

A fragment of a man in his car, hurtling headlong through time, a startled, curious look upon his face,

Appearing for a millisecond before vanishing into the city ether --

But they believed it to be only shadow, or mist, or a trick of the eyes between traffic lights,

And continued on without a second thought.