The Wheel Spins

The duality of nature resolves into the unity of spirit.

The unity of spirit revolves into the duality of nature.

Time is a wheel.

Time does not exist.

I am trapped in this body, but I am nowhere.

The wheel turns and I see what could have been and what is.

Only I know what could have been.

No one saves me, but I save them.

Each pattern recognized obscures infinite mysteries.

***** * *****

I stumble as I approach the finish line, and the other runner overtakes me to steal the victory.

I could easily have won but chose not to.

I’d won many times before, on the merry-go-round.

But I learned that the underdog struggling for second place just lost the love of her life.

I knew the win would mean so much more to her, even stay her suicidal urge.

Because I stumbled, she would live to fight another day.

She would go on to do greater, kinder things than win a few races.

I hug her and raise her hand like the ref does a boxer after a prize fight.

The wheel spins.

***** * *****

I walk among the plague-ridden masses.

I’m looking for a particular young lady.

I know that ministering her will kill me, but it will save her.

She will minister to many others and save a boy who will grow up to change the world for the better.

Many lifetimes I fled to my manor in the countryside, working on alchemical experiments, waiting for the black death to have its way with the rest so I could go back into the world and increase my fortune.

Until I found something in my work that opened more than my eyes.

The wheel spins.

***** * *****

I am sometimes lonely, walking my father’s estate like a ghost.

The Lady in White, some call me.

I console myself with letter-writing, journaling, and occasional visits from friends and family.

Many lifetimes I walked away to live a full and vibrant life, travel the world, or start a family.

But here I concentrate on putting together my little chapbooks, filled with poems.

I don’t bother trying to publish.

I know the right ones will make it into the right hands at the right time and influence the right minds.

I’ve seen it all, and done it all, countless times, and I’m the only one that remembers.

I don’t mind missing out on the fun here and there to leave something for a later generation that might lift them out of despair.

Hope is the thing with feathers.

The wheel spins.

***** * *****

I gamble and drink a bit in college, cherishing what friends I make.

I know the work ahead will be arduous, so I indulge in the brief time I have.

At some point, I’ll dig ditches for a measly sum, just to make it to the next phase, and by the end I’ll be just as broke as I was in the beginning.

Men who only care about money will rip me off.

People will poke fun at me, calling me a mad scientist.

But my inventions will change the world, and so to the world I will gift them, knowing that though this body will certainly go to its grave, energy never ends, and it all comes around again.

I kept the fortune many times, caroused with other powerful men, ruled the world I would have rather saved.

Yet somehow the friendship of a pigeon means more to me than any amount of fame and fortune, so when fate turns me back to this fork in the road, I choose the path of hardship and loneliness.

I am misunderstood, but it’s okay, because I understand.

The wheel spins.

***** * *****

For the longest time I ran away.

Instead of fighting for the freedom of my fellows, I pursued my own.

If I choose to stay and fight, I always go to prison.

Sometimes I die there.

Sometimes I live and they finally set me free.

Either way, I serve as a symbol, a beacon to lead my country out of the injustice of Apartheid.

What I learned from the many completions of the cycle was that I’d rather die trying to do what’s right than live knowing what I didn’t do.

Immortality is a curse, but that doesn’t mean I can’t confer blessings.

The wheel spins.

***** * *****

We look over the sprawling landscape from the top of the cliff.

I am offered rulership over everything I survey.

What the tempter does not know is that I had once been where he stands.

I lured others away from difficult paths, painful ends, martyr fates, yet left them empty and hollow, questioning the meaning of life rather than fulfilling it.

I watched myself acquire everything and want for nothing—only to feel nothing, even as that divine source whence all my fortune came used my every machination to accomplish for others what I would not do for them myself.

The Faustian bargain, as it would later come to be known, is as much a trick on the devil as by him.

I smile and decline the tempter’s offer.

To rule anything means little, when everything changes.

The self is only ever its own master and must choose whether to flow with the river of time or swim against its currents.

No matter the choice we make, we are still within the river.

I’ll give myself to the cross this time in the hope that eventually no one will have to hang.

The wheel spins.