Page 5

What

What?
When?
Where?
Who?
Why?

This.
Now.
Here.
You, me.
Just because.

Life

What I wake up to is not
by choice. Celebration or
regret not appropriate
as this is my true life and,

whatever the circumstance
I find myself in today,
it is now, not another
time. Here, not another

place. Here, now and unique.
This is my life. Whatever
I do should be done with all
my body and mind leaving

nothing over to do in
some imagined place at some
future time. Tasks begun are
to be fully completed.

I should live in gratitude
for this life, valuing it
not as a stepping stone, but
as just what it is, my life,

life not understood as years
between my birth and my death,
but as all I am aware
of in this unique moment.

Maps

Our birth, was it like
parachuting down to unfamiliar terrain
and then being given maps to show us
shops, school, park, train station,
airport, rivers, mountains and oceans?

Or were we each entering a place
with no maps because no one had ever
been here before?

When we die, will we be able to
leave our maps behind so
other visitors can find the same shops,
school, park, train station, airport,
rivers, mountains and oceans?

Or will our world dissolve back
into the time and space from which
it crystallised at our birth?

This is

This is all there is,
steam rising over hot tea,
hands around warm cup.

Fuss

It took two of us getting
the thought out. One at the front
and one at the back lifting,
tipping, pushing and pulling.

We felt it growing stiffer,
heavier, 'till once outside
it was a sold thing with
its own colour, weight and shape.

Not wanting to just leave it,
we made a platform with a
cover to keep out the rain,
a lock for the garden gate.

Lying awake for the first
few nights, alert, listening
for unfamiliar sounds,
kept going out to see it.

Next time we have such a thought,
we decided, we will let
it drift quietly away,
save all the fuss and bother.