Dave Bonta's three lines turn on a small joke about time. The title, "Instant nostalgia," names the feeling: the speaker misses something that only just ended. The morning was "green and gilt," a phrase that suggests fresh leaves and golden light. Even hands seem to belong to that beauty, as if they were "art," perhaps because they were doing something absorbing or creative, though the poem doesn't say what.
Then the mood shifts. By night the speaker is "late to make up my accounts," a dull, slightly guilty chore of tallying and catching up. The word "sigh" carries the whole change. What felt vivid and whole in the morning now feels out of reach, and the day has already become a memory.
The poem is quick and quiet. Its brevity mirrors how fast a good moment slips away, and it leaves us with a familiar, gentle ache: wishing we had noticed the morning more while we were in it.