like gazing into a kaleidoscope

where all your midnight streets converge

 

nostalgia, the solipsist’s regret

 

you can sit here all day in your idling car

under the old tree behind your old friend’s house

 

the tree itself  has no significance

nor the friend for that matter

 

he has long moved on

the old house wears the face of a new century

 

after half an hour

all the ghosts have got bored and drifted off

 

the fuel gauge is courting empty

but for a moment there

 

it seemed like one map

had been laid over another

 

the universe of now

cradled in the world of then

 

like the mind’s eye in the mirror