In the flow of life

The magic of a painting
(or a photograph)
is how it seems
to make time stop,
freezing a moment
in this river of change.

In the flow of life,
time seems always
to forge ahead,
leaving us behind
as we contemplate
what just happened,
unprepared
for what will happen next.

How pleasant, then,
for memory’s tableaus
to be spread out before us,
as so many works of art,
objective artifacts
of our experience,
spread out for our perusal,
at our leisure,
as if time did not flow
at all.

And if it didn’t,
what would it feel like
to be alive,
as if in a museum,
a tribute to life,
a monument,
but not in the flow
of life itself?