Immortality Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

Immortality means nothing to me
If it must be striven for
If my words must be driven towards
Some goal outside myself.

If, in order to gain acclaim,
I must shape my art
To fit the current ideal,
Shaving off beats and
Eschewing assonance
To make the language sound spoken,
Like broken ellipses,
Littering the page,
I will remain unpraised
By the literati.

But, if by immortality, you mean the peace,
Found within the stillness of my soul
When even my sense of self
Melts into the whole of the present moment,

Then, yes, that is my purpose.
These visits to myself
Stolen from time set aside
For more practical tasks
That the world deigns to acknowledge
With its acceptance if not its praise,
Are worth more to me than celebrity.

For what would fame bring but self-doubt?
What would all the world's words do
But drown my own out?
Like experiments where the observer
Changes the observed,
The smooth surface of my own pool
Would be shattered by the patter
Of the tiny kamikaze dives of raindrops
Forcing me to wait for the storm to abate
Before reclaiming what little truth I had achieved.

And so I am content
To send my words into the world
Unnoticed by the noted
Because by the time a poem is composed
The spell is broken and I must wait
For inspiration to invite me
Into its time-suspending state again.