The Thought That Wasn't There

I thought I was awake today,

Or so the voice inside would say.

The world appeared, the morning came,

The light was light, the flame was flame.

But what is real, and what is not?

A truth remembered, then forgot?

A world perceived, a self conceived,

A thousand things I once believed.

I think, therefore I am, they say,

But thoughts like clouds just drift away.

And if the thought should disappear,

Would I still be standing here?

Perhaps the mind invents the ground,

The distant stars, the daily sound.

Perhaps the things I see and know

Are just the places thoughts can go.

And what is thinking, anyway?

A passing echo, night or day?

A little voice that claims to know

The river it can never hold?

I watch a thought arise in me,

Then ask who watches, who is free?

The question forms, the answer bends,

And thought begins where thought pretends.

I think about the one who thinks,

And watch the self dissolve in links

Of memories and words and names,

Like reflections dancing in the flames.

But who has made this endless chain?

Who feels the joy, who holds the pain?

Is there a thinker standing by,

Or just the thinking passing by?

Perhaps the mind is but a screen

Where nothing's quite the way it seems.

Perhaps the self I call my own

Is just a story thought has grown.

And if the story isn't true,

What then remains? What carries through?

If every certainty should fall,

Was there a self there, after all?

The room is quiet. Rain falls slow.

The trees outside continue to grow.

A bird calls out across the blue,

But is the bird, or thought, what's true?

I reach for words, but words divide

The very world they seek to guide.

I name the sky, I name the sea,

And build a world around a me.

Yet names are not the things they name,

And thoughts are not the things they claim.

The map is not the land below,

The flame's not what its shadows show.

So let the questions drift away.

Let silence have the final say.

No need to prove, no need to know,

No need to reap what thoughts may sow.

For even doubt may be a dream,

And nothing quite the way it seems.

The mind may ask what all this means,

While life unfolds between the scenes.

And maybe this is all there is:

A fleeting thought, a moment's fizz,

A world that seems to rise and fall,

Or maybe nothing there at all.

Not nothing like an empty space,

Not something hidden, lost without a trace,

But something thought cannot define,

Beyond the borders of the mind.

And when I ask if I exist,

I find no answer in the mist.

The question fades. The day moves on.

The thought is gone before it's done.

The sky remains, or so it seems.

The world awakens from its dreams.

And I no longer need to know

If I am here, or just a show.

For maybe life was never meant

To be explained or proven, spent.

Maybe the truth we seek to see

Is not a thing that has to be.

Perhaps reality's disguise

Is thinking that we must be wise.

Perhaps the greatest mystery

Is that there's no mystery to see.

And in the stillness, soft and wide,

No thought to follow, none to hide,

The world appears, the world is gone—

And nothing asks what carries on.