Physical ability is precisely like a dream—
physical ability decays.
We wake up to the mind—which is no dream.
Youthful I am, inside the mind’s maze,
as attractive dreams and bodies disappear.
(You once entered my dream with perfect skin.)
Bodies seem real. Even now they do.
But the mind never seemed like it was entirely there.
How is it that what seemed real is not?
Your physical self but a dream!
I don’t know what to do with this knowledge.
My mind fears mind, too, is physical: a decaying dream, too.
I stand aghast. I witness the death of you.
Your mind inhabited the physical and now it, too, is gone.
What sound did your mind, as mind, make?
Did that sound travel on and on?
If the mind is ageless, noting everything age,
is the mind eternal?
The mind feels everything the body feels. Love. Rage.
With confidence, I believe my mind is not a dream.
The body, like the dream itself, is the dream.
We over-value the ripe. We over-value the now.
A dream was the body that was mine. But how?