My scars are not real,
memories an illusion,
my hairline as firm as dreams.
Blood, tears, pain, joy
are no more our life
than silent films are truth.
If you can’t stand the heat,
says the one with the fan,
but even he is an hallucination.
Had I missed this turn of the wheel,
what matter?
Someone else would have gone to war,
another might have written peace haikus,
many more could have done my work,
it is all simply chopping wood,
it is all no more than carrying water,
it is not mysterious,
the thing we call our life.
It is said that,
sitting under the boddhi tree,
Siddahartha Gautama saw,
not hundreds of figs on the ground,
but thirty-thousand past lives.
The boddhi itself requires
three thousand years to form its shape,
and humans have but a moment
to find meaning, even when they look.
I think for a moment
on my own approaching nonexistence.
Does the earth fall from my feet?
Must I reach for my balance?
No, I go on.
I go on.
I go.
