Moon waxes and wanes

By X. Z. Shao

 

Moon waxes and wanes

veiled and unveiled by clouds.
Surfaces of earth shift around,
which in a Chinese idiom:
The sea has turned into mulberry fields.
An insect born in the morning
may die in the evening.
The polar star may moves
and constellations may turn.
Change, change,
to everything seemingly fixed
to things there for you to grasp
to things already “yours”.
A movie ends with a city
shaking on the horizon of the sea,
like a mirage in the Taklimakan,
while on it a little urn of human ash
drifting up and down.
You may have your fair share
of impermanence,
yet you tend to suppress it
as you hide a skeleton, the Death,
in your closet,
but you often hear
its dangling in your dreams,
or even in your moment of ecstasy,
which you fans away as a gadfly.
How about be plain with it,
open your all senses
to the autumn leaves
yellowing and falling,
to lavas spewed up by a volcano,
to buildings bulldozed down and rebuilt,
to tides fluxes and ebbs,
to winds move around you,
to the furniture and books
and your cozy nest,
which you take for real,
but their every elements
like those in your body
are getting older every second
towards their final falling apart,
and to your old photos,
to people around you,
how a friend’s face changes
in a space of a few years,
how many go, how many come.
To hold and look at the face
of Impermanence,
to be aware of Time and Death,
is not a joy-killer
to your happy-go-lucky way,
it is a dance with changes
you need to learn,
is a mindset of letting-go
is a process of desolution
to be in tune with everything,
so that Time and Death
will have nothing to do
when they find out
you have already danced,
as they come to force your learn,
out of a tough love of caring ones.

            2015/5/21