The raw screech of the Hawk as it tears
from the Hawk’s throat instantly
unites the whole forest.
Outside of that piercing cry,
in that startling moment,
what else is there?
Likewise, big bang, wind chime,
thunder clap, baby laugh, twig snap,
breaking glass, dog bark, bell ringing
in a ghost temple at dawn —
all stop the streaming mind, leaving
nothing to desire, nothing to petition
the god for, nothing to worship or abhor.
There is a framed picture on the mantel.
The family is smiling for one eternal moment.
In that moment, there’s no past, present, future.
Nobody is breathing, sweet silence has prevailed.
There is just a frozen camera flash, rendered
forever in a square piece of captured light.
No one or no thing occupies this light.
It may be sufficient unto its own luminosity.
It is neither existent nor non-existent —
such categories don’t apply here.
Meanwhile, notice how the smiles on the faces
ripple out of the picture frame, go out the front door.
They’ve set off together through the forest, subtly
affecting those whom they encounter, but in ways
which everyone is at a loss to adequately describe.
I will rise up in the story, gather each one of those
dear traveling smiles in the same way that I might
catch falling leaves before they reach the ground.
Look, the eyes of the leaves are turned towards me
in my madness as I raise my hands in the breeze.
It seems as if I am trying to catch the wind!
All around me, the wandering smiles have arrived
to comfort me — it is just the way things work.
I realize that somewhere, a family once gathered
in an indefinite room and posed before a camera.
At that same moment, in the nearby forest, secretly,
the Autumn leaves were softly falling, but with no one
to catch them before they reached the ground, until now.
Just as I stretch to snatch one from midair,
the raw screech of a Hawk as it tears
from the Hawk’s throat instantly
unites the whole forest!
Feeling To Infinity 
wow ❤