Observance & Reflection On Every Day Poem by John Tansey

Observance & Reflection on Every Day
The months pass, unnoticed,
like days of the week
and the years
like Seasons...

There is only so much we can retain.

Only so much remains in this narrow, thin wedge
of our consciousness
it recalls only so far back
and, even, less so forward…

And of this vast pool
of our lives,
We retain so little.

Moments come and go;

But, mostly, it is the tragedies we remember:
Threats upon our survival that stay etched in the brain.

But it is our short-term memory,
primed for survival,
that discards what is not vital to survive the day,

That is the culprit, that starts by stealing a day, here and there, a few weeks.
Up to a protracted period of months,

Until, one day, you or I will look up
And we will not remember or know each other, at all…

But, now, I still do remember…

Like the simple gesture of compassion:
Feeding my son's two goldfish.

How dependent they were on our kindness,
our magnanimity onto lesser things.

The whole of Zen can be summed up
in this one simple action;

It’s expression of empathy.

It is soothing, to the soul, to know
that, although, we too will soon forget;

Humanity, itself, in its collective unconscious,

will remember to shake hands with every soul it passes...
Copyright ©2007 John Thomas Tansey