Epiphany
It happens not so much on schedule
as at those moments when
something with something else
beautifully collides,
Nelson taking the ball from Mitchell
on a fast break, for example,
then stopping suddenly short
to break the school record from twenty feet,
the ball at the height of its high soft arc
like a full moon fully risen,
or the student in Composition
reading aloud the surprising words
of her essay,
weeping at the new loss
of something lost a long time ago,
the eyes of the boy on the back row
saying I must have been blind—
she's wonderful,
the ball descending then
to flounce the net
like a rayon skirt,
the young man on the back row
studying his hands
as if learning
for the first time ever
what they might be holding
by William Kloefkorn
from Going out, Coming Back
White Pine Press, 1993
.