These Instants become Crystals²
Here we’re trapped in the Amber
Of this Moment – there is No Why³
Each Moment irresistibly Transforms
Us: breaking us Open each time Anew⁴
Narrow your Life down to This Moment⁵
We Live for Now – and what we call the Eternities⁶
Our talk is of Heres and Nows, our conduct
Likewise: in No act is any Future, any Past⁷
For Short Time: an Endlesse Moniment⁸
Little Minutes, humble though they be,
Make the Mighty Ages – of Eternity⁹
Though but for One Moment – it
Exists, Exists: this alone suffices¹⁰
¹ Jorie Graham, Exchange
² Robert Bly, Driving Through Minnesota During the Hanoi Bombings
³ Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
⁴ Anna Gurton-Wachter, Afterward to Utopia Pipe Dream Memory
⁵ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
⁶ H.G. Wells, The Croquet Player
⁷ Edna St. Vincent Millay, Theme and Variations
⁸ Edmund Spenser, Epithalamion
⁹ Julia A. Fletcher, Little Things
¹⁰ Circe Maia tr. Jesse Lee Kercheval, The Bridge