The Moment

I use this word
“moment” so often
that I may have
cheapened it, may have
obscured my reverence
for how many universes
may be found inside it

so let me correct this
by saying that “moment”
contains the entirety
of northern lights
and orgasm and stark
anger when faced with
a piercing incident of
hate and the gentleness
of a hand smoothing
a child’s hair and how breath
sucks away after a body blow.

Give me a moment
for “moment” being 
a snapped pole and
transformer explosion 
pocketed within a 
captured gaze and 
dawn through the window
of cheap motel after
a sleepless night of your
choice — despair, lovemaking,
anxiety, anticipation of 
family arrival after long absence,
the moment of loading the pistol,
settling out the pills, the moment
of sweeping them back in the bottle,
of putting the gun away.

A tender moment, a moment of
clarity, a momentary fear.

Give me
a moment, and then another,
and another. A gift of
presence in the present. Every moment
the last, and the first.

No better word
exists; the others all came to be
merely to hold onto that one.