Parsing the Ambiguities of Now
How to measure now, time’s
fragment floating between that
unforgiving past and elusive future,
between plans and recollection,
our shame and our prayers,
our did and our will?
How to define now
the step dividing up from down,
the mile between went, and going, coming home
the art between history, modernity, futurity
the thought where observation ends, reflection begins
when speaking turns to spoken,
writing written, reading read, thinking thought,
where judgement ends and sentence begins.
Can you hold now,
that place where imagining
morphs from dream to memory,
The heartache between loving and loved
The brilliant flash between living, lived?
Call that place hope, seize it!
before some damnable -ed weighs it down
with anachronism, lost opportunity.
With pathos.
How long, in dog years, is the present to a rock?