Did You Notice?

Did you notice?

That peculiar lack of ground beneath our feet,

That dust made of all the things that were

that girds our toes. It is the dust

that steals promises. It's clear now.
Form can never hold.

Standing in the last years of life

I look back at a story dreamed, and half told

and unfinished In every line.

I see my protagonists age and shift, disappear or decline

So many I loved, honored and emulated, I see now,

they do vanish in a day.

They were here, then they were distant

Sending messages from far away

I thought of them

I loved the bits of story we had made together

And then one day, a day like any other,

One of them was gone, and then another.

Stories become shattered mirrors,
shards of memory.

And soon enough, memory will fade to white.

Were any of us here at all? It is almost night.

The best of friends, a loving father,

teachers who swore allegiance til the end of time

So many gone

Into urns or stupas or white dust above a wave

Who can stand on this ground?

We cannot write our story and think it will stay.

"Life is a dream," Buddhist lamas told us

And then went the same way.

So I open my hands to the sun.

I watch the children pass, full of today.

In the end, what I hold to

Is love.