picnic by the bayou

To exist seems only to arrive as a contour—
a shimmer without ground,
a pulse without duration.
Whatever gathers us together
does not reveal itself as a substance,
only as an alternation:
appearing, receding,
the rhythm mistaken for flow.

Perhaps there is no passage at all,
only stillness,
while something beyond alteration
remains indifferent above it.
What arises feels incidental,
outlined by other accidents,
then erased before it can be known.

So I am here,
bound to this instant,
to this unnamed interval
that may itself be no more than a pebble.
If there is time,
it is only the shifting of difference,
never the thing itself.

And yet—
as if to remind me—
the old images return:
a river unmoving beneath,
a sun unspent above,
and between them the brief glitter of light,
a scattering of reflections we call our lives.
Each flicker vanishes,
but only through its vanishing
does appearance come to light.

And then even that lesson falters,
dissolving into the silence
of a current that may not move,
of a brightness that may never fade.
All that remains
is the gaze
that lingers。