Time present and time past

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
--Excerpted from TS Eliot's "Burnt Norton" c1935

Sudden memory flash:
When I was seven we were inner-tubing in the lagoon on the Frying Pan river. In trying to get myself and the tube out of the river so I could walk back up to the starting place, I ended up squirming past the rocks forming a barrier there, and was swept on down the river, all the way to Basalt. The sheriff fished me out of the water by the swinging bridge. He had to give me his coat when we got to his car--I was completely naked :)