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Expleasure

James Brasfield on

Published in Poem Of The Day

How time slowed when any thought
or apprehension of the next instant
vanished (no obligation, then or later),

how in that long moment, all at once,
yet without surprise, how what was close
was present in a sudden suspense,

as such things rarely exist
as they did then, each apart from all,
seen as it might be truly,

and gave way to a pleasure
that had long been missing,
to expleasure, as if I were akin

to the smallest things-ribs
of a leaf, penny on a dresser-
of a saving stillness, doubtless

always here, just beyond
the scrim of what calls us
from that silent astonishment,

the more so since the feeling
dissolves with its presence of detail
merging with a distant seeing,

as when I walk through a room
and nothing is equal there to the calm
from the simply seen.


About this poem
"One afternoon, I had taken off my glasses and was resting on a worn quilt when the threads of its seams entered a singular clarity and stillness."
-James Brasfield

About James Brasfield
James Brasfield is the author of "Ledger of Crossroads" (Louisiana State University Press, 2009). He teaches at Penn State University and lives in State College, Penn.

***
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 James Brasfield. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate




 


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