wouldn't you say

One Almost Might

wouldn't you say
wouldn't you say one day
with a little more time or a little more patience once might
disentangle for separate, deliberate, slow delight
one of the moment's hundred strands, unfray

beginnings from endings, this from that, survey

say a square inch of the ground one stands on, touch

part of oneself or a leaf or a sound (not clutch

or cuff or bruise but touch with fingertip, ear-

tip, eyetip, creeping near yet not too near);

might take up life and lay it in one's palm

and encircling it in closeness, warmth and calm, 

let it lie still, then stir smooth-softly, and 

tendril by tendril unfold (there on one's hand)

one might examine eternity's cross-section

for a second, with slightly more patience, more time for reflection? 

A. S. J. Tessimond