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The Tricks of Perception Unmasked

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A swallow flew across the sun at dawn,
its fleeting shadow blanketed the Earth.
The smallest wing eclipsed everything.
A butterfly trembled, poised to unfurl.
Even the frailest reed bends, yearning to learn.

I once saw a raven open its beak,
to swallow the moon at dusk.
Perhaps, only a trick of distance,
yet the light faded — what devours can also cure,
for what darkness holds may flower into flame.

From a tree on the shoulder cusp of mountain
an eagle soared beneath
what my eyes believed was drifting over a lake,
Perhaps, it was only a cloud in blue sky.
The river is never the still, it coils sinuous, flows
What the mirror shows is never the same.

Once, within a raindrop on a leaf,
I glimpsed the entire blue earth
floating becalmed in space.
It taught me — a droplet can cradle the world,
an instant can hold the breath of forever.

So sight deceives,
with its perception
but the deception is fertile:
the small and insignificant 
made vast and not kept to last,
significance pressed into trembling specks.
The mask of perception hides its truth.
Interpretation makes illusion the face of being,
the essence of becoming, in ways that clouds reality.

What I see is never the true reality.
Yet in this trick lies a hidden revelation.
All is illusion,
It's a fleeting happenstance in time and space.
A perception warped by the mirrored shadow of self,
from which there is no escape.
As we only see, what we are within,
and what we want to see, and believe.

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