For Debby

The Gift of Defining the Small Moment

If you see past the moments that
Poets describe with rapture.
If you miss the nuance…...

Then perhaps you are speeding instead
Of traveling through life.
For what would be the point of

Not recognizing the irony,
Ignoring the beauty,
Being unable
To define the rare times
When the small moment is larger than life?

When the details will be forever
Captured by the camera
Of your mind’s eye.
Memories locked, complete
With smell and texture.

A treasure to be drawn out of time
And forever made yours in its capture
And its ethereal existence in your mind.

Can you see how exquisite it is
To be able to revisit that one moment in time
When the world stopped turning, when,
After its passage, nothing was quite the same?

You needn’t write of the moment
As poets do,
You needn’t tell others of its existence.
They have their small treasures – moments of their own.


The gift of recognition is yours alone
Moments in your life, kept deliciously
Within your reach – to be drawn out and on
When you need the magic.


~quidrock 2003