The Has Been

Some Mondays, driving to work
I wonder whether what haunts us
Is our sense of object permanence.

The past is ever present, the past
Is everything, including the present,
Including the future (nothing, like us).

And we are everything past
That is present, but we're convinced
There's always something happening

Outside of our awareness, outside
Of the past in front of us that is
Us, an absence that isn't passing

By us. We believe a world
Exists where we can't see it,
Big, fixed, permanent, important.

Although we realize we experience
Only what we experience, we think
We're missing something, the sun

Gone under the hill, still burning
Somewhere we cannot feel.
So we imagine the return of what

Kept going, beyond us, after 
It passed out of our experience,
When all we will ever be consists

Of curating what we have, the was
That is always changing, always
Is the was, nothing us without us.