I knelt before a fragile flower
and said, “I fear you might wither tomorrow,
and I can only stay for an hour.
But I cannot pluck you from this meadow,
nor preserve your countenance in a picture.
For can you truly exist
outside of all of this?
What does all this become in your absence?
How does one capture the moment in its entirety,
and preserve it for eternity?
A picture might flatter your brilliant hues,
but can it contain the warmth of the sun,
or the capricious April breeze?
Can it convey their strange equilibrium,
perfected in this moment I cannot seize?”
She replied,
“Caress my petals,
breathe in my fragrance.
In an hour we die.”
“Are we both so fragile, you and I,
that in an hour’s time we are doomed to die?
Have I not the strength to spare us both,
and capture this joy I feel right now?
I am so busy, I do not have much time!
You see, I had to schedule this visit,
and would derive all that I can from it.”
“Yet you are not so full of joy, but fear.
And your fear of losing the moment
has stolen the moment from you!
Oh, you feel the joy of the present,
espy that creature, so rare, so magnificent,
then strive to preserve it for the future.
You kill the beast and mount it
so that you can gaze on it forever.”
“Oh how quickly the sand falls through the glass.” I cried.
“Hurry then, I beg you, tell me how the beast survives?
“In an hour you will die here with me,
and the man you do not know will leave.
Will he despair of the moment he could not grasp,
clutching instead some lifeless facsimile?
Or will he hold that blessed memory,
immaterial and immortal?
Will each breath have been taken
as though it were the last?
The moment, the thing itself, sufficient,
even as it dissolves in to the past?
The picture, the painting, the preserved bouquet,
each is lifeless in its own way.
The shutter, the brush, the delicate touch,
oh those tired hands, driven before a desperate mind!
It misses the very joy
it is striving to bind,
and counting down the clock,
dies unhappily with the moment.”
Poetry by Adam Nevarez 