Nirvana

Really, what was I before your birth?
Was I a thing at all
before that snowy night in Seoul?
My soul’s birth,
Your father’s disappointment
(he wanted another son). 

I, in Indiana, twelve years young,
was given my first gun about that time
And shot a blue jay
Or wounded it,
then tried and failed to nurse it back to health.
Cruel pathos.
Suddenly I saw its beauty
And what I’d done.
That blue jay might have been you! 

Truly, what was my voice then,
my limbs, my guts, my toes?
Searching, yes, and forlorn—
No clue the reason why.
Except to say that I was incomplete. 

I’ve stumble dumbled many many times,
Learned some few things to show for the pain.
But looking backward only makes me laugh,
So much dirty water. 

Always out of season.
A goose caught in the ice of a winter pond.
In the wrong hemisphere. 

Some deep electric current pulsed,
And the planets crossed the sky in unison.
I had new eyes and ears.
I became what I was meant to be.
If not complete then more complete.

Someday maybe someday
we shall find what it is we seek
together.
Nirvana is it?

Or maybe we’ve found it already
and don’t know it.

1/31/03; 6/16-17/25