Expleasure Poem by James Brasfield

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.