from Bitters

We've all known those transfixed
a moment. The girl, so golden in fifth
grade, dulls out, bragging of being a local
photo-shop manager by faded sixteen.
More than mere accident; some moment
when time itself seems to conspire
on the self's behalf. A harried mother
grows perceptive and poised, one semester
of English assignments, then lapses back
into a lifetime of self-depreciatory jokes—
that she could have been a "good Mexican"
with her love of blue trim and pink light switches.
Some moment when love moves beyond
its usual allotments, when the air seems
full of species of affection that no one
has yet named, when a gesture or a word seems
to reach invisibly, deeply enough to quiet
the palpitating heart, when the teacher
trembles for the student on a motorcycle,
when the murderer lies down in the mercy
of words, when the boy who was thought
to be mute steps forth and speaks.
Some halting step, all we know of miracle,
a moment so fleetingly gone, briefly
elastic that then grows brittle and snaps,
as what tried to climb up the back stairs
of heaven's mansion falls back, caught
on the trellis, hemmed and hawed, snagged
and stunted to the gravity field, that
unforgiving inertia which we call "ourselves."