"Holding the Moment, for Jan Bowman"
Russell Stockard, Jr.
Holding the Moment
for Jan Bowman
You can’t hold back
what can’t be
held back,
just as surely
as you can’t
sculpt the wind.
Most of the time,
we don’t want
to hold back a new
day’s dawn or
the first yowl
of our newborn;
sometimes our most
fervent wish equals
an utterly endless
moment of joy.
But most of the time
the pendulum hews
to its hypnotic swing
and metronomes
us into a most
numinous trance,
leaving our conviction
about Nature’s
relentless force
to rove among
the doubters.
For once,
why not rise
to the imposing
certainty,
to a state of being
every bit as vast
as finding oneself
alone on a limitless
beach, the sun
arrested in
its overarching,
the waves curing
the sand whites
and blending
the blues
and greens
into a vivid
picture postcard?
In waking we
discover
the perfect
conspiracy
that clocks lie
and calendars
pose nothing
but a convenient
fiction about
which we agree
not to disagree.
In rousing ourselves
with every ounce
of energy
bargained from God,
we run across
the conundrum
that to cling to
the moment exacts
surrendering
the truth we know
for the truths we don’t.
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