SOMEWHERE IT IS STILL HAPPENING
A Way of Knowing is about the feeling that time may be less fixed than we imagine. For a moment, the world seems slightly out of place: an afternoon belongs to another year, an hour turns back on itself, and something that has already happened seems to happen again.
Ordinary things — a water tower, a bicycle, a radio, a half-open gate — become strangely unfamiliar, as if fragments of different moments are briefly overlapping.
The heart of the song lies in the line: “It was a way of knowing / Though nothing had been said.” This is not knowledge that can be proved, but an intuitive sense that past and present may not be as separate as they seem.
The ending deepens that idea: “We were still / Coming through.” As if an event does not fully disappear once it is over, but continues somewhere, in some form.
A WAY OF KNOWING
The afternoon was out of place
By several years or more.
We passed a field of silver wire
And counted neither four.
A distant engine changed its mind
Somewhere beyond the rain.
And what had happened once before
Was happening again.
The numbers on the water tower
Had faded into blue.
A coat of dust lay on the day
As if the day were through.
We kept the same uneven pace
Past things that had no name.
And every time the world moved on
Something stayed the same.
It was a way of knowing
Though nothing had been said.
The hour turned around itself
And came from somewhere else.
For just a little while
The edges disappeared.
What had already happened
Was somehow happening here.
A radio behind a wall
Was playing half a song.
Someone had left a bicycle
Where bicycles don’t belong.
The sky had changed its address
Without informing us.
We crossed a patch of colder air
And thought no more of it.
Much later, or much earlier,
The same thing may occur.
A gate may stand half open
Without knowing what it’s for.
A sound may cross an empty field
And never quite arrive.
And something we once passed through
May still be passing by.
It was a way of knowing.
No question had been asked.
The hour folded once or twice
And settled where it was.
For just a little while
Nothing needed to be true.
And somewhere in the middle
We were still
Coming through.