Everglades Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

Glide through the everglades with me
Slip between the cypress trees
Sit silently and listen
To the song of the frogs
The flap of paddles
The ripple of sunlit water
Spreading out endlessly
Directionlessly
Forever.

Look up at the sky
Watch the clouds floating by
Drifting like us
But along dissimilar streams.

Are their lives more or less temporary than ours?
Do we both dissipate and congregate?
Does everything intermingle in similar cycles?
Might I become one of these trees someday?

If so, are they not my brothers?
Is this water not my mother?
May I not return to her womb
To be reborn in altered form?

Perhaps with wings.
Perhaps with fins.
Perhaps to swim below boats like these,
My predatory menace unnoticed.

It is but a thin veneer
A seemingly solid illusion
That separates you from me
Me from these trees
These trees from soil and sky.

Close your eyes.
Let go of time.
Feel your own weightlessness.
Drift.

Remember what it is
To simply exist
Unfettered by perceptions
Unseparated
Undefined
Deathless.