Only a moment

It was only a moment
when, at the water’s edge
the swallow hopped through the water reeds
over the fallen, the golden, from which it would make its nest;
only a crack in time,
when the garlands draped over the stone terraces
were loudly buzzing metropolises,
trading hubs for gleaming wings and quick appendages.
 
It was only a hollow in cruelty
when the swan with the torn leg grazed in the bay
and shook the water from its impossibly graceful neck
like nature’s Miles Davis or the doyenne of the dance;
only a hint of the passing scent
of cool white jasmine in the shade
or the sweet claws of honeysuckle in the blazing sun
or lavender’s insistence upon marrying the tangerine rose.
 
It was only a second in the universe or the universe in a second
when I saw the unsettling familiarity in the deer’s brown eye,
or the forest’s silhouette in the midnight sun
or the view from the lake’s surface under the gull’s cry.
 
A reflection on Midsummer’s Eve.
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