A Poem For Another Friend Who Was Offended By My Stare.... Poem by RIC BASTASA

when you see a tree on top of a hill,
do you sometimes think that it can be something else?

or perhaps someone, perhaps it was once a man who had gone astray
and by bad karma, The Heavens, punished it to be a tree forever

it cannot move when it rains, neither can it run against the storm
it is stuck, helpless on its immobility

sometimes i think that way
i.e. making stories about those that cannot talk to me

it is not a fabrication, far from a lie, it is just trying to know
what we have not seen or felt before,

everything can be,
everyone can be someone else

depending on who sees it and when
or where and why,

and so when i see you, i sometimes stare at you
and you get offended, and i do not explain,

i imagine you as greater than yourself
the possible brightest star in the sky

or another sun in the future of another galaxy
far away from me

as i regress into ash, into another grain of sand,
into nothingness that you perhaps have not ever imagined
even for once.