Seizing the Moment

The moment does not wait, it offers itself and passes,
it does not linger at the door through second-pass analyses,
I have watched men calculate the risk while the moment evaporated
and stood in the resulting loss that their caution had created.

Seizing the moment is a reflex built from preparation,
the man who hesitates has missed the window of the station,
you have to be so ready that the taking is instinctive,
seizing the moment is a practice,
not an instinct that is distinctive.

I built the habit over years of saying yes to the forward-facing,
of moving when the alignment showed instead of long appraising,
the moment arrives dressed in ambiguity and partial information,
you will never have the complete picture at the moment of the station.

I have seized moments that looked wrong to everyone observing,
taken them before the surface logic was quite worth preserving,
because underneath the surface was a depth I had been reading
for three years before the moment came and put me in the leading.