Barred owl calls in the distance.
Displaced from the pine tree by the annoying hawks
they’ve had their babies elsewhere and I only now
and again hear their romantic calling, who who who.
More evidence for the Law of Impermanence, a
happy idea when times are grim but one we’d like
to forego when things are just as we like them.
The law of impermanence states that everything changes
the curve of the river the child the flower the state of grace.
Approaching the bluff today I, crestfallen, saw that the
fantastical dancing man, the luckily shaped branch of a fallen tree,
was gone, not just broken off but completely missing, no trace of him.
Only yesterday I’d rested happily in the thought that the woods are
ever changing, always fresh, rejuvenated every season, every day.
All well and good until the dancing man disappears without so much
as a by your leave, my dance card lying empty in the palm of my hand.
Oh the lacy light of summer
favorite and best slanting across
early in the morning and if one
sleeps too late lolls awake fails to take
oneself (one’s dogs) out in the
world of it soon enough
well then it’s another thing
and one has missed that thing
but then there’s this and on and on
that goes for everyone knows
the world keeps turning
all things change
moment to moment
for better or worse
’til death do us part
and then who knows
maybe
after that as well.
End of a month another month gone
behind us over and done with a month
of my life and yours filled never to
be lived again every day every hour
a lesson in impermanence and yet we
fail to learn refuse to learn even as we
watch the dawn full of magic slip away
into full sun twilight into utter darkness
night again to daybreak the constant
movement of time the earth ever turning
time flowing onward regardless of our
silly slow reluctance to go gracefully
along as if we in our plodding human
ways could do anything about it.