Moments or Lifetimes

To love for a moment,
ever able to move one,
unattached and free,
or to love for lifetimes?
Who deeply loves,
who deeply lives?
The life of the vagabond
or the life of the settled?

Moment to moment,
I am able to love and move on.
If the other moves away,
offering my blessings.
Lifetimes and lifetimes
I am able to love.
If the other moves away
I offer my blessings.

Moment to moment,
I am unable to love and move on.
If the other moves away
I offer only enmity.

Lifetimes and lifetimes
I am unable to love.
If the other moves away
I offer only enmity.

The last step depends on the first;
as the first on the last.
Step by step I make my way.
Yet if not where I am headed
I have in mind,
step by step, I go astray.

With unwielding patience
I consider the destination.
Yet if I not take care
of the steps I take,
with sweet dreams in mind
I drift away.

Eyes fixed firmly on the path,
I make my way to the sunlit peak;
and with eyes firmly fixed
on the sunlit peak,
I carefully make my way
along the mountain path.


Wisdom is to see the close
and the distant together.
Then one will not
stray off the path,
and then one will
reach the destination –
whether love is for a few moments
or for lifetimes
matters not.

Moments turn into lifetimes
and lifetimes happen in a moment.