
There are four
sparrows on
the road leading to my
home
Two are spooked when I cough
One leaves of its own accord
The fourth stood his ground
And puffed his tiny chest
and sung a song I shall never
Live long enough to forget
The tune spoke of longing
and worms
and flight and clouds
And 20 thousand thousand thousand years of dust and light
bundled
screaming
On bone hard lips
I am brought to my knees
and closer to the primordial
cradle
too close
and the distance between us
collapses
without either of us having
moved an inch
It was then I
realized was I had trespassed
And my home was gone
Because it had never really been there
And he was master
And I was nothing in less than a moment
And he and continued to sing
An aria of eons
And I felt the sting of reality
and had a glimpse of perception and
time for what it was
Nothing but two accidents of empty everything
locked in bloodless battle
with the overwhelming weight
of the exhausting sabhāva-dhamma of life
and the inexorable flow of event consuming event consuming event
And the sparrow
his voice explored me
and brought me to a clear wall
over which I climbed without climbing
and I forgot the ascent without forgetting
and beheld without beholding
the summit
And it was a valley
And it was a song from a sparrow’s beak
no more or less anything
a star
a crumb of earth
a fistful of sweat
a corpse
a staff of wood
and a song
more or less than anything else
I wept and dreamt of
annihilation
of suns battling each other for
sovereignty of the sky
of elemental clouds
fading and pulsing and turning and screaming
and it was a song
from a sparrow’s beak
and it never sang
and it sang
and I traced a line from the corner of my eye
wet with tears
to the edges of conception and phenomenon
and I was inverted and the
sparrow sang of nothing
rivers
belching brocades from the silt
and wrapping themselves around the bosoms of
inherently impossible gods
before I realized
I had slept for 300 billion years
and had awoken in a dream of myself
dreaming of dreams
and sparrows
and rivers of golden cloth
and blazing steam
and I screamed
and realized my scream was a song
and that I was a bird
a sparrow
and I took flight
and ended my song
and erased with the beat of my wings
that thing that I never was
always
from the earth
What you think