Incredible Poem

[SageOnTheHill]

"I Was Reading a Poem" - by David Rutschman

 

 

I was reading a poem by Ryōkan about a leaf, and how it showed the front and the back as it fell, and I wanted to call someone — my wife, my brother — to tell about the poem.

 

And I thought that maybe my telling about the poem was the front of the leaf and my silence about the poem was the back.

 

And then I thought that maybe my telling and my silence together were honestly just the front of the leaf, and that the back was something else, something I didn’t understand.

 

And then I thought that maybe everything I understood and everything I didn’t were both actually just the front of the leaf — so that the totality of my life was actually just the front of the leaf, just the one side — which would make the other side my death. . . .

 

Unless my life and death together were really still only the front of the leaf?

 

I had left the branch. I was falling.

 

I was loose now in the bright autumn air.

 

 

Link to original - https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/502/i-was-reading-a-poem

[skywords]

@SageOnTheHill

Of course, the "answer" to all those questions, and infinitely more such questions, is "yes:  all of the above," because "being" is actually also "becoming," or the truth that truth is change, or dance, and all things are always changing into a new larger/smaller/equal opposite.

Right?

That's the whole point.

Right?

[SoothedByRain]

Day after day, alone on a hill
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him, they can see that he's just a fool
And he never gives an answer

But the Sage on the hill sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning around

Ohhhhh
Round and round and round and round and round