This moment you stand poised, at fulcrum point,
balanced a breath between the equal weights,
on one side presses all you did and were,
against all you can be, all you can do.
And in that balance, in that moment you,
pressed like a flower between two great weights
free for one instant, free to choose and change
and as that instant passes, free again,
in each next instant, bearing all that weight.
Posterity, off duty, hangs about watching,
slouching in doorways, raising dark eyes as you pass,
soliciting for strangers,
recruiting you for unseen causes,
kneeling to suck off a president,
avid camp follower at any briefing,
half-blind, confused, but smug, smug always,
secure in her certain knowledge
that history is over.
Not for you.
Here, at each moment, you are building the future.
Go on, click
that mouse again,
and as this moment clicks on to the next one
here, as you hang poised,
Posterity takes your hands
to pound nails through them.
Now, in each breath,
now is the only possible time
the only possible place
the only moment of freedom
to make up your mind to act.
4th April 2004
