...the everflowing current of the Now
precipitates us onward, ever on
into an unknowable tomorrow
where all that's won is lost, that's lost is won,
where friends and lovers meet and disavow

their pasts as meaningless, as history,
at best a lesson to be learned and then,
with appropriate prayers of sorrow
put in scrapbooks, museums, rather than
holding them as birthplace of mystery

and invention; where Now reveals the past
to be a Springtime's garden of delights
designed to blossom into fountainheads
of experience, each one a deluxe
and delicious memory, made to last,

indestructible, infinitely so;
where Now is both current, and 'the' current:
Now as in 'right now!', and in riverbeds'
fast-flowing flash floods teeming in torrents;
in this instant, frozen, glacially slow;

or Now as bright chaos, helter-skelter,
Now as innovation, Now as in new,
Now as foundations for stronger structures:
everything, ever depends upon Now;
Now is an oasis, Now means shelter

and battening hatches against the storm
of fateful consequences yesterday;
but Now is also mistress of futures
and wise enough to keep her powder dry
and not think tomorrow always means harm;

and yet Now is so inconsequential,
evanescent and fleeting, here-then-gone,
a mere will-o'-th'-wisp, a nothingness
not a weapon, nor a son-of-a-gun
either, but still something quintessential

betraying a singular relevance:
Now knows its place, succinctly; it is sure
(and most inarguably so, no less)
that in precise purpose alone, it's pure,
aiming for the future, and coherence.

MP 12824