Drinking a cup of tea in my overgrown back garden
Watching flocks of birds make complex shapes in the air
The wind through the tall grass whispered to me
A riddle of unity, described and known but never understood in logic
I who am matter, am I different from clay?
I’ll be clay again soon enough
I can live only in the present, looking out at past and future
fated to never set foot in the same river twice except…
except the one I cannot avoid
the river of time , the river of forgetting and remembering
The Lethe, whose slow waters washes our selves away
But it is better to have and lose, isn’t it?
All things are temporary, and we are given but a brief season of breath
That I can be matter among matter and yet wonder about my place in it.
Its only an illusion that we are separate
Blessed with a feeling to share in another’s joy or pain
And yet apt to grow bored living in an ongoing explosion
we live in an ongoing explosion, A mere flash to one outside it
A mere flash to one outside it yet life seems a long strange miracle
The wind dies and the birds sign the riddle to a close
Now that I’ve glimpsed it from outside
I have written you my peace so that we may share it
I recognise myself in you all so lets look to sit by a future fire
We cannot now share a cup
But neither can we deny our bond