experience passes o

what was, isn’t

I wonder:
does a jigsaw puzzle, solved,
ever feel sad as pieces are pulled away?

Buddhists can create sculptures of sand
which least a brief breath
and then the grains slip away from each other
and that which was, isn’t,

we pull together family and friends,
the logistics of things and the dream of what can be,

we ready ourselves to work our way up a mountain,
to open ourselves on top to know people and place and experience,
more fully,
more deeply,
than the hypnotic regularity that day-to-day can become,

while in the moment I only occasionally feel
past and future come at me,
yet when I’m down the mountain,
and people leave, back to their own places and time,

 every leaving is a loss that diminishes me,
for a chunk of who I am
is the experience we’ve built together--
before, then up, on, and over the mountain--
pulls apart:
grains of sand come together,
and what is built in the material doesn’t last,

may we remember and treasure what was,

and what can be.

by Henry Walker
July 30, ’12