Tao

Largely desert or tangled vines
No clear path, the road continues
One way, step by step:  continue.
Outside of ages, beliefs, cultures, faiths
Conscious searching is unconscious search.
Wrong decisions, right actions
Attempting to define:  failure, or patience?
Hypocrisy, or determination?
Johnny Appleseed, strewing prenascent fruit
Around his unstilled hunger, unquenched thirst;
A time for every purpose under heaven.
Amazed by joy, the accidental discoveries
Are only positions on a turning wheel;
Observed and observing
Velvet deer in velvet twilight
Wondering at passage, eyes tender and amused
And haunting songs, unknown cadences
Familiar.  Every day a gate:
Autumn, summer, sunrise, moonset.
Each sunrise a gateway into joy and wonder,
Each moonrise a gateway into mystery and beauty;
Loving the smooth current, fish in water,
Savoring Worth, bouquet of living
The fretted work of wandering a life of lostness,
Amid the beauty and mystery, a meditation,
Contemplation, each glass of wine a benediction
Ruby glowing; and wine-colored days effervesce
The wandering of time -- What can we love?
The search, discovery, the wheel of death,
Of life; salt of winter cold,
Spice of autumn color.
Obverse, reverse coin of existence --
How bright!  How lovely!
In Johnny's shadow we spend and spend:
Continue.


Utah 1984
M. Reynolds