This Small Now

Only for this moment –
Can I love the face in front of me?
Only for a single breath –
can this be all I see:
these hopeful eyes,
this broken glance,
this thin disguise,
this fleeting chance
to be inside the given time,
to love a life that is not mine
and find
a beauty in
the preciousness of this –
existence, person, moment, gift,
the sacredness of what-now-is

Can I see you for what you are –
a whole –
with healing grace
that lines these scars
a face
I recognize – not mine
but from some place
I hold inside

For this small now,
this moment we may soon forget
I feel somehow
that we belong to one another though

we only just have met