Expleasure

         How time slowed when any thought     
     or apprehension of the next instant
             vanished (no obligation, then or later),

         how in that long moment, all at once,
     yet without surprise, how what was close
             was present in a sudden suspense,   

         as such things rarely exist
     as they did then, each apart from all,
             seen as it might be truly,

         and gave way to a pleasure
     that had long been missing,
             to expleasure, as if I were akin

          to the smallest things—ribs
      of a leaf, penny on a dresser—
              of a saving stillness, doubtless

          always here, just beyond
      the scrim of what calls us
             from that silent astonishment,

           the more so since the feeling
       dissolves with its presence of detail
                merging with a distant seeing,

           as when I walk through a room
       and nothing is equal there to the calm
                 from the simply seen.