HERE AND NOW

When I'm here and now
and look around,
it seems for an instant
that no place
no time
could ever be this vivid.
Until I pass through
to the next moment
with the next breath
to the next space,
and another here
becomes now.
This is a maddening mystery to me.
I have sometimes tried
to capture the sensation
of this instant,
this surrounding,
this entirety of
sight and sound
and movement.
I've tried to memorize a tree,
to mind-snap a man
who is crossing my path,
to self-record the shout of a child,
to suck in the sensation
of warmth or cold,
to feel the mass
of a building to my right,
the swoop of a car to my left.
But here and now
moves into memory
swiftly,
inevitably,
irretrievably.
There simply is
no force
that compares to the power of
being present in the present.


© Ellen Azorin