The Sleepless Brahman

An hour passed, another hour without sleep, and still his son waited. The stars shown in through the window of their hut. Orion winked. Mother Earth turned in her own slumber, The constellations smiling down on the Brahman’s cottage. The son’s knees quivered, but not his constitution, as the archer shot his bow across the night sky And into the cool and wizened eye of this youth. Moon beams poured out from the old man’s water jug, Streaming pinpoints of light across the silent night. Another hour without sleep or the acquittal of this stubborn boy, the offspring of his own loins. “Let the boy go and learn what you cannot teach,” Old-wise moon seemed to say. “Set him free!” The Brahman turned his face from the open window, to mute these unwanted - unearthly mentors only to face a greater mentor, his son at attention. The boy instructing by example, was becoming a man. Mars the mighty beamed down, marking the season for change. The time had come. “But why?” The father asked in vain. Once again, an obedient son was all that answered his refrain. The boy would die of hungry exhaustion before accepting a life here with the village elders, they who had already taught all that they knew. The first rays of Aman’s gift crawled through a small window, to illuminate the boy’s face with the warm glow of day. Rising from a bed that might never offer rest again. The father stepped out and placed his hand on the shoulder of a man he proudly called the flesh of his own flesh. “Go now,” he offered, blessing the boy’s journey, “And when you have returned you will teach me another lesson, of what bliss you have found in the world.”