The great anomaly is that time is an illusion but the calendar doesn’t lie. And so, having attained a certain age, I occasionally wonder where I’ve been and where I’m going, and what, if anything, is the purpose. We are all of us bounded by the twin illusions of space and time, much as a property may be bounded by the woods. Which leads to the question, is the boundary woods real, or is it, too, an illusion? If space and time are illusions, and if the boundary of our lives is an illusion, what then are we experiencing? Is all an illusion, and if so, to what purpose?

We live our lives in certitude that all about is real
That memory recalls the past, and rain and cold we feel
That time flows past at leisured pace, the future yet to come
Time’s flowing stream depositing the past, that is for some
The distant future and for others pressing present times
But all is an illusion and what’s real is unmatched rhymes
Where man and sparrow think the world is what it is he sees
But what is seen is different for the mantis shrimp and bees
The bounding woods we enter at our birth and leave at death
Are ours to walk about alone until our final breath
And so alone we live surrounded by all that we love
Till in the woods we hear the singing of the mourning dove
And yet in the illusion we seem real to those we leave
And in the woods that binds them they stand quietly and grieve
While we unbounded by the woods discover that the whys
Of life is that free of the woods that nothing ever dies
For man and sparrow, mantis shrimp and bee alike shall live
Beyond the woods and know the joy that Providence will give
To all who enter into life and walk the wooded trails
To those who journey through the woods to lifting of the veils