Everything everything

Why is everything everything?

Why is grace awkward?

Truth both shiny and dull?

How can honesty be humble and haughty,

sometimes hurtful?

Jane Hirschfield wrote

the world is a blurred version

of itself. There it is again: the thing

is itself and its shadow,

the fact and the perception,

perhaps even the interpretation.

Befuddled, bewildered, beleaguered,

I bellow, “When will this lesson stop?”

Amused, the heavens koan:

When it stops being a lesson.

While doubly true,

it is only half reassuring:

Ugly inside of beauty,

hunger entwined with satisfaction,

peace birthed of conflict.

No depth without surface,

not one without the other,

no shadow without light.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston