I wonder where I’d be if I wasn’t attached to the judgment of others. I wonder what I would look like. Who would I be?

I think I’d be a Buddha sitting under a tree.

In a world that’s gone crazy
There’s a crowd that’s gone mad,
Who stare at a sight,
They see as quite sad.

I’m sitting in stillness,
Tattered clothes on my back,
I’m full of contentment,
Yet all they see is I lack.

They laugh and they shout,
As I sit under my tree,
“Get a job you old bum,
You need to be more like me!”

With a snort and a laugh,
They will surely all scurry,
They have deadlines to meet,
And lives full of worry.

And while we hustle and bustle,
In the new cars that we buy,
We ignore the things,
That survive when we die.

Yet in sitting and loving,
With nothing to pull,
What was closed is now open,
An empty cup is now full.

This tree blocks the sun,
On the hottest part of the day,
The fruit falls from its branches
To the soft grass where I lay.

The rain softly caresses,
My skin and my hair,
And while I choose to sit still,
There is nothing keeping me there.

I’ll smile in silence,
A withered hand I’ll extend,
There is nothing to lose,
When everything is your friend.

The clouds will float by,
The seasons will change,
The clock will strike zero,
What was real will seem strange.

And on my last breath,
This old man will have shown,
There was nothing he’d lost,
In the life he had known.

But for now I will sit,
A man trying to see,
That brave part of himself,
That sits under a tree.

~

Relephant:

The Nether Times Between. {Poetry}

~

Author: Tom Grasso (Gyandeva)

Editor: Caitlin Oriel

Image: Carla Cometto/Flickr