No Return

Wonder why the universe is here
almost every day there comes a time
blank face enrapt within empty stare

while some part of brain seeks rhymes
searches unanswerable questions
to muddle, let mind swim with the sublime

and absurd. There is freedom in the notion
that this body’s not the real me—
a vehicle rather, to constrain the soul from

its fall, an acorn from a old oak tree,
disperses waves within a puddle
only there as long as seen.

And which are we, there’s the trouble,
are we ripples or their cause?
I fall asleep when questions are this subtle,

wake to a world as full of flowers and flaws
as the one just dreamt, where
our own awareness makes the universe ours.