Time is the Enemy

I dabble in Buddhism and I think if I was a better Buddhist I would be a better poet. This is a pledge to aim to capture more of the beauty in life.

I’d spend a hundred happy years

In contemplation of a stream;

The babbling flow, the glint within

Of fish scales, sunlight; I would dream

Of every growing thing therein

And linger not upon my fears.

 

My fears arrest with tick and tock,

In clockwork handcuffs, my young wings

As sand pours from my mouth and eyes

Into a desert of dead kings.

The noble Boddhisatva tries

To be as peaceful as the rock.

 

Rock still erodes, but he would sit

As though a hundred years or more

Could dance before him in the brook-

For no day’s wasted that’s adored-

The nag of waste is death’s fishhook

That ruins life, the hypocrite.

 

Observe today the sturdy frog

Whose whiplike tongue needs hardly try,

Whose webbed feet and athletic legs

Serve him to hunt the damselfly.

A jeweller’s greenest stone yet begs

To match his beauty on the log.

 

Immortal men know where to live-

In moments of eternity-

I stray again, let’s watch the breeze

That rushes like modernity

And twirls the diamond shades of leaves

On sunsets I must now forgive.