at a crossroads, holy howling Tao

fireflies tonight, two

distant birds scrawk

in a pair of treetops, hidden

lonely nests.

I walk

down familiar forking paths

wandering, wondering, forgetting

about the fireflies, evanescent as

time, quick to perish; one moment

appearing from nothingness, emptiness,

fullness, light transmigrating. flickering

across bead-jewels of Indra’s net,

leaving darkness, arriving all the same,

coming apart, holding it all together;

this moment gone, disappeared across the path

back into the mystery that never leaves us,

A second appears, floats, descends

to the crown of my head and then

snuffed out and what remains is man

and path, a great emptiness before him.

The further I go the more I know

the road’s end will forever elude me

and that perhaps each road, each path,

each highway of fantasy and thought,

heart, gut, or eternity’s magnet

is interwoven with others like it -

the same pathway, different paths:

a tent at the end of one

inviting amber-glow within;

a branch-cradled archway

looming just out of reach

in shadow down another;

one road leads on, another back;

at a crossroads, holy howling Tao.

what is a road? nothing, but a metaphor

meant to guide us as fireflies

flicker and fade.