Question: I'm trying to write something sort of poetic sounding.

> 
> Instead of memories let's discover the
>  present that we wanted to search for.
> 
> 
> 

I'm thinking that maybe I should write the word "moment" after "present" to make it unambiguous. I would rather not though, because I don't want to limit the meaning of "present" to "this moment." I would like to leave it open so that it can mean "this day" or "this time." But then if I don't add the word "moment", I think that this might bring up images of searching for presents during Christmas, and I don't want that to happen. What do you think?

Answer: 
From a strictly grammatical point of view, I think the context of "memories" establishes the expected temporal sense of "present" rather than leaving any reasonable possibility that it could be interpreted as a gift; so you shouldn't run into any difficulties due to ambiguity.

(Although this is technically off-topic, from a poetic point of view, while the sentiment is nice the phrasing is somewhat lacking. Perhaps something like "Let us not live well only in our memories; rather let us create the present that we have desired.")
You could replace "present" with "now" (or something similar) and remove the potential for ambiguity.