Just This Side

This evening stops short of paradise 

because it cannot hold time still.

The great fulfiller, the great betrayer.

The river we step in never twice

at the place we claim as “Here.”

The picture catches a fleeting moment.

A poem, a story recaptures what was

never caught.  The beauty of the evening

light in the trees, on the ground, 

the silence and stillness I take for granted,

is like a prayer to open the gates 

of what cannot be seen but felt 

in the beauty, the fullness of a moment.

And makes me think paradise

is nearly within sight.  I listen 

for a shadow whispering, “Follow

me.”  I am ready to say, “Yes.”

I know I am Moses just

this side of the Promised Land.

-Byron Hoot

hootism (stolen from my friend, STC):

 “Others, meanwhile,

Dote with a mad idolatry, and all

Who will not fall before their images,

And yield them worship, they are enemies

Even of their country.”

from Fears in Solitude, April, 1798, During the Alarm of an Invasion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge