Staring Off

Caught myself in a meeting with my eyes unfocused on any events outside my thoughts

Gazing emptily at a butt-littered curb someone honked at me as traffic moved on at last

Suddenly I realized I read each word but that I was comprehending something else

I saw the manicure, fine clothes and pampered face but I did not hear her spiel

Riffing out on a tangent from one thing he had said, I never even heard the rest

Lost in contemplation, an image I would not remember was burned into my past

As I dropped into that private space their monitors showed my brain waves changing

Staring off to unseen distances, the light in my eyes shown towards the inside

I lost myself somewhere between a dream and the foolishness surrounding me

Things were making more and better sense but then, someone called my name

I heard only the birds outside the classroom thanks to her endless droning

Plotting out the might-have-beens and maybe-could-haves often led me far afield

Walking in such reveries I commonly tripped on the most obvious of obstacles

As I stared off, some perhaps thought I pondered deeply but…I was simply somewhere else

My blank fixation perhaps the visible sign of an innocuous and dreamy epilepsy

But then again my quiet abstraction might have been simply a way to get attention

Sometimes I would relive many years in the space of but several minutes

Every so often as I returned I would confusedly try to rouse myself, as if from a sleep

There was no payoff in the real world for all my semi-comatose peregrinations

I did, however, wonder if this was where I spent all that time that I was always saving