Quest For Inner Peace

In youth, the heart runs like a deer through a forest on fire,
hooves striking sparks from every expectation.
Dreams hang overhead like glass lanterns in a storm,
swinging wildly between desire and disappointment.
Love’s romance arrives as lightning in summer fields,
beautiful enough to blind, powerful enough to split old trees,
and the mind carries its ambitions like a backpack of stones,
climbing mountains that recede with every step.

Then come the crowded middle years,
when calendars breed like vines across the walls.
Mortgages, children, obligations, losses,
all whirl together like leaves trapped in a drain before a flood.
The body becomes a weather map of remembered battles,
scarred coastlines shaped by countless tides.
Grief settles in quietly, like snow filling abandoned footprints,
while worry gnaws the bones with the patience of winter.

Later, time begins sanding the sharp edges smooth.
The victories once polished like trophies gather dust,
and old resentments loosen from the ribs
like rusted nails falling from weathered boards.
Friends become constellations, some shining, some vanished,
their absence still charting the night.
The years flow downstream carrying names, possessions, and titles away,
until the soul stands lighter, like a river stone finally revealed by lowering water.

At last there is an empty room.
No clutter of becoming, no noise of comparison.
Only sunlight pouring across the floor like liquid gold,
and an open door framing a mesmerizing sky
of slow-moving clouds and endless blue radiance.

In the center sits a man before a singing bowl.
A wooden wand circles its rim, steady as a planet's orbit,
drawing forth a note that seems older than memory itself.
The sound widens through the stillness like ripples across a clear lake,
until bowl, room, sky, breath, and silence become one thing,
and peacefulness, after its long journey, finally arrives home.