Everyone in life must face and move through time. Feeling how precious life is, we tend to squeeze as much as we can out of the moment.
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Everyone in life must face and move through time. Feeling how precious life is, we tend to squeeze as much as we can out of the moment. Often, this only makes us more anxious and moves us farther from life. This poem came from my own efforts to slow down and relate to time differently.

You can't hoard moments like coins.
You can only bathe in them.

You can't trim hours like wood or glass.
You can only enter them.

You can't add days like a drop of God
to every drink.

You can only immerse yourself
in the river we can't resist.

Begrudge time and it will turn its back
on you like a dead secret.

But bathe, kiss, enter, bow. Immerse
yourself in the time you have and time
will carry you softly and clearly
through the eye of its needle
into all that is.

A Question to Walk With: Tell the story of a moment of timelessness you came upon and what that felt like. What conditions were present that led you to such timelessness?

For more Poetry for the Soul, click here.

For more by Mark Nepo, click here.

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