News of the Universe: Voices of Others

One day the master imagined
a new blossoming.

"The trouble with most poetry is that
it is either subjective or objective."

"Sometimes I go about pitying myself,
and all the time
I am being carried on great winds across the sky."

"I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment
on my life."

"The seat of the soul is where the inner world
and the outer world meet. Where they overlap,
it is in every point of the overlap."

"Where the poet is looking for
is not the fundamental I
but the deep you."

And what does the master feel?
What does the master see?
…
In the new blossoming
is not the now or then,
near or far;

In the pulses and heartbeats of living things,
nonliving things gathered together in all seasons;

The leafs in the air are earthly by birth;
Their fall, stunning and graceful as they appear to be,
is short of expressing gratitude and experience.

Finally, the master decided
they were not you.

When you fall and touch the ground,
you may try whispering to the rock and stone beneath.
You return to your family,
and your senses of sights or sounds,
times or distances,
will echo deep inside.

Indeed, you can finally retreat
from dreams of oxygen or color.
Yes, your sensory organs may have been disheartened
and disheartening sometimes.
But you have been blessed and safe
as always.