Fugitive Moments
By John Herlihy

Fugitive moments arising,
Flecks of phantom time comprising,
Ghosts with a lasting eternity to spare
Time and timelessness separated by a hair
A fleeting happiness, an enduring sorrow,
They appear today, but are gone tomorrow.

The poet steals a word from the lexicon,
Jaded sympathies from a deep well drawn.
A treasure trove of emerging emotion
As in a momentary prayer of deep devotion
The word has power to turn into a tear,
Or merely ends up as a casual sneer.

A breeze gets lost on a summer’s day,
It passes by with nothing special to say.
The firefly flashes its momentary light,
The light but a fugitive invading the night.
A quick stroke of a colored pencil
Blooms into the face of a yellow jonquil.

The flower sheds buttery light in the sun,
But escapes like a thief when the day is done.
I see fugitive moments suddenly arising,
Specters of apprehension of our own devising,
Spot decisions that are born, live and die,
As renegade moments that live on the fly.

A friend endured the most fugitive moment of all,
His sweetheart, the girl he held dearly in thrall,
How she wore that yellow satin scarf with flare,
Matched by a radiant smile inducing him to stare.

One day, she said goodbye setting his heart aglow,
A goodbye that became forever encased in sorrow.
She died in a car accident while driving to work;
An enduring fugitive moment he could never shirk.

Moments have become a fragile window in time,
Born within eternity as fugitive and not fully mine.