All the world may be a stage, but I don't think it's an illusion. You are right when we get down past particles and compounds to atoms and fuzzy quarks. Reality isn't even solid, but constantly changing in a way that our very high resolution eyes still don't see.

But I can come back 50 years later and find the same tree in the same spot that looks a bit different… Taller maybe, or bigger around the girth. But it is still the same tree even if I'm not the same man I was 50 years before.

But poets and philosophers need illusion so they can go beyond current reality and try to come up with realities that just might be true, somewhere, somehow, sometime.

Ron

The flow of your poem is very calming, a reverie drawing inwardly to the reality within. What a mystery Life is! Beyond must lie something truly wondrous. Pondering true existence is an endless search, but the only one worth taking, I believe. Very fine poem!

The mystery will always be with us, but that doesn't prevent us from speculating about it, as we poets often do. An interesting stroll through eternity. Personally, I believe in the reincarnation of the soul. We see resurrection and rebirth around us all the time, night and day, the seasons, the artefacts of nature such as flowers and trees, why not the human soul. It is not possible to learn all that we have to learn about life in one lifetime, the soul lives on to inhabit another shell of a body that lives and dies, the soul lives on. This is what makes most practical sense to me, rather than a single speck of dust life and that's it, oblivion. That makes no practical sense to me.

Maybe it is just an instant that we exist. Me I have a theory (since I was born a problem solver). Maybe we live on in the genetic code of our children, and childrens children. Imprinted as flashes of images and warnings of experiences to avoid and experiences to seek? I guess that is the most logical explanation of past life experiences, and I'm always searching for the logical explanation. No matter how drawn I am towards the more poetical mysticism. :)

Moving on to the theorizings of Sartre and Plato. In a way our existance is an illusion. Given how what we see is translated into a reality by our optical nerves interpretation of light and shadow and our nerve cells ability to interpret the impressions that we recieve our relalitys could vary quite a bit.

How those inputs, the electrical impulse known as action potential is carried forth to our brains can differ between us depending on damages we could have on our nervecells membrane. Plato and Sartre was on to something.

But then we have neuroplasticity also coming in and correcting our damaged cells, making new path ways where our elictrical impulses can travel instead, and so it is that we can relearn to do things even after quite severe damage. That gives a new meaning to, where there's a will, there's a way. :)

Interesting read. Much harmony and frail beauty in the questions you've posed in your poem.