SIEVE
(The Danaids were the fifty daughters of King Danaus who murdered their husbands, the fifty sons of his brother Aegyptus, on their wedding night. Only Hypermnestra spared her husband whom she loved. As punishment for their crime, the other Danaids were condemned to an eternal torment in the Underworld: endlessly carrying water in a leaking vessel.)
These things you call experiences, are they separate
leaves who do not know
their neighbors in bloom and bare? Or rather notes
in grand symphonies,
seasons in the House of Being? They rise and ring.
And you, water carrier, you who
press them in the book of memory, hoping to
hold them forever, page by page,
why is your pail so hard? Through wind and rain
and gossamer glide, do you know
the mind of emptiness? The more you try to catch
the world the more
you fail. Buddha is the sieve you seek. Flowing
and flowing, everything
fills you, again and again. You have nothing to lose
but yourself.
John Valentine is a retired teacher living in Savannah, GA.
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