Nature's Mirage : The Illusion's Path

Stanza 1:
The forest, like a tapestry unfurled
Green patterns stitched into the waiting world
Each tree a thread within the woven whole
Birdsong and sunbeam interlacing souls
Yet every fabric hides a hidden side
Reverse the weave to comprehend the lie
For things are not as patterns first appear
When through the warp we view the weft thread's leer
Perception is the needle's fickle guide

Stanza 2:
The open sky, a blue mosaic strewn
With clouds, soft brushstrokes fading in and out
Sun rays beam blessings, stroking all they view
Nature's sublime artistry on show
Yet storm clouds gather, rumbling, billowing
Pearls of rain transform to angry stings
A rainbow, prism promise after pain
Just water refracting, nothing gained  
Not all that shimmers, radiates truth

Stanza 3:
The winding path meanders left and right
Through shaded grove and into golden field
Each step a choice which way the road might wend
Adventure, purpose, meaning to unfold
Yet choose a different trail and all might change
The journey, and the destination strange
For things are not just steps from here to there
But choices rife with chance, despair, and care
The walk itself is truth, not endpoints traced

Stanza 4:
The mind, a glass kaleidoscope enspheres  
Each thought a shining fragment, clicking, clacking
Building patterns, shapes and colors bright
Symmetry and sense within our sight
Yet twist the tube, collide the crystals again
And all familiar forms fracture and rend
Each shard its own refractive destiny
Apart or joined, a strange transparency  
Thoughts form the truth, unbound by rigid frames

Stanza 5:
The heart, a vase awaiting to be filled
With love and loss, joy and grief intertwined
Experience pours emotions undefined
Mysterious alchemy of mind  
Yet tip the vessel, spill the contents free
Emotions cascade, spreading wildly
See them for what they are, a mingled flow
Not objects captured, but a letting go
Meaning is fluid, always change in kind    

Stanza 6:
This body, vessel buoyed on breath's tides
Lungs swell, heart pumps, electricity flows
Blood, muscles, bones, all play their part  
An orchestra of organized chaos  
Yet peer within each cell's darkened mirror
Strange quarks and leptons jitter, blink  
Particles conscious? Matter aware?   
Or random firings, without purpose there?
The deeper truth, perhaps no eyes can see  

Stanza 7:
The moon, pale orb presiding o'er the night
Silver goddess, muse of magic, dreams and more
Or airless rock, a serpent's egg gone stale
Face or pattern seeking, we knock at her veil  
Yet blink again and all familiarity recedes  
For the moon is no flat disc, pale lantern beam
But a sphere, hurtling, locked in gravity's dance
A far stranger cycle than nights could entrance
Truth and beauty eclipse simple symmetry  

Stanza 8:
The child, tiny fount of unknown depths  
Each look, each reach, reveals a new surprise
Fresh eyes ingesting, this strange world made anew
Small hands grasping what older ones never knew
Yet time flows on, the child older, larger, changed
Familiar contours mature, rearranged   
Adult eyes now reflected, gazing back  
Wonder fading into familiar track  
Growth itself conceal the truth once held  

Stanza 9:
The darkness, a closet we fear as children
Each creak and sigh hid monsters, demons within
Light switch dispelling shadows real and imagined
Dawn's warmth melting nightmare's icy fingers  
Yet flick the switch, only absence appears
No substance to our ephemeral fears  
The unknown holds no horrors but our own
Projected dread to fill a vacant throne
Reality we cloak in false shadows  

Stanza 10:  
This mind, aware all rests within its sphere
Thoughts, feelings, senses, spinning centers here
I ride this merry-go-round, admiring the view  
Sights and sounds, passions, all seem to accrue  
Yet I am no fixed pin, thoughts not a carousel   
Awareness moves, expands, cannot tell
If ride spins mind, or mind conjures the ride
Dreamer or dreamed? Divisions subside
Perspective feigns solidity, stability

Stanza 11:
These words, graven trails across the page
Letters, patterns, meaning encoded in ink
Fingers dance, imprinting ideas into form   
Hoping prose can capture truth once drawn
Yet words themselves are smoke, ash in the wind  
Abstraction, representations dim  
The richer meanings never trapped by a pen  
Always more truth left unwritten  
Lines but shadows of full revelation   

Stanza 12:
This world, an onion demanding to be peeled
Each layer removed reveals another below  
Familiar shapes become strange geometries
As deeper levels churn unlocked mysteries   
Yet no central heart or core to be extracted   
No primordial truth to be abstracted
For the onion is but a vessel seen awry    
No hidden essence, merely layers piled high   
Truth's infinite recursion, all the way down.

Stanza 13:  
History etches lines, connects faded dots  
Ink flowing onwards, event linking to event  
Heroes, villains or faceless populations  
Rising, falling, to time's refrain compliant   
Yet peering closer at the parchment sprawl  
Reveals erasures, gaps, from the master scrawl  
Loose threads, frayed edges, stains blotting neat lines
Whose hand chose the shapes this grand tapestry mimes?  
The victor's truth may be the loser's fiction  

Stanza 14:  
Religions, rivers starting from one source   
Diverging, branching, seeking the wide sea
Ritual, meaning carved into landscapes  
Mapping human mind's complexity
Yet from high above, all one meandering
Culture's floods, finding paths least resisting
No promised land beyond each river's end
Just water cycling, without fixed shape  
Spirit's flow takes any form, all the same

Stanza 15:  
This eye that watches, the world beholding  
Out there, objective, concrete it seems  
A place where waves break upon solid shores  
As real as these words or page between
Yet this seeming sphere exists within  
No out-there separate, but born from within  
Signals streaming, light and forms compiling   
The world is but awareness unremitting  
Vision is the view, and the viewer too  

Stanza 16:  
Each birth a stream spilling into a vaster sea  
Wailing and kicking, we wash up separate, alone    
An island self emerging from life's breakers  
Solidifying, claiming a place as our own
Yet every wave returns again to oneness  
A reuniting with ocean's voiceless vastness  
Mistaking the temporary for permanence   
Forgetting our source, misperceiving the tense  
Oneness pretending at fragments, forgetting

Stanza 17:
This world, a tapestry of light and sound
Streams of sensation, coalescing, dissolved
A play of forms, stable and unstable  
Concrete expanses, ephemeral like foam  
Yet focusing closer, solidity profits nothing
For matter too is mutable, rippling  
No building blocks, but vibrations in grids  
Events in space time, each photon just a quiver  
Reality's weave in ceaseless flux, forever

Stanza 18:
Each mind an island on being's sea
Thoughts waves breaking along its shores  
I pace my beaches, horizon clear  
Sky and ocean in blue sphere  
Yet I glimpse your island, not far from me  
Another mind, privy to its own waters  
While between us spreads the gap  
No bridge traverse, no jumping span
Abyss separating Self and Other

Stanza 19:
This earth, an ark of mind and matter fused
Spinning in the silent starry black  
Nature's bounty, a mystery self-made    
Life's lush palette, born of dust and lack
Yet if we sailed between the galaxies  
Would earth appear so infinitely special?  
One of endless turns of chance's kaleidoscope
No purpose, meaning to its forms aesthetic  
Mystery prevails, all guesses equal hope  

Stanza 20:
This miracle called life, Ouroboros
Chemicals cycling, eternal round  
Fractals repeating patterns everywhere  
Temporary shapes from permanent background  
Minds glimmer, webs briefly catch the light  
Dancing motes within being's greater plight  
No matter the pattern, the same bits recombining   
No birth or death, only endless rejoining  
Temporary forms within enduring flow  

Stanza 21:
Reality, a diamond of infinite facets  
Turn and turn, each glimmering new, unknown   
This strange loop never retracing its steps
Each glimpse revealing another facet once hidden  
The eye itself another priceless cut  
Nested worlds within worlds, no apex, no base
No surface or depth, but only more faces   
Truth's infinite eye, endlessly embracing
New wonders, yet some light always out of view

Stanza 22:
Perception builds reality grain by grain
The eye collating, assembling shards  
Into this table, that distant sun   
All that is, built from mind's mansions
Yet turn the kaleidoscope once more  
Same fragments form new arrangements  
The table now atoms, raging furnace  
No fixed shapes, but flux and processes
"Is" melts, flows, "seems" dominates reign  

Stanza 23:
Identity, the chief self-spun fiction
"I" pretend permanence, solidity, coherence   
A center holding steady amidst life's turbulence  
An enduring essence unchanged by flow and variance
Yet just as river shapes depend on riverbed  
"I" am but patterns in movement wed  
No core untouched by interbeing's dance   
All definitions dissolve at essence's expanse  
The "I" is not, yet still I feel and dream

Stanza 24:
This world, interbeing's dream made manifest  
The true nature of what is beyond words  
No mind can shape, tongue give sound  
An awakening, lightning strike profound
Yet here, this place of sun and shadow  
Birdsong, silence, laughter, rain pooled meadow  
A vision shaped, senses overflowing  
The mystery moves, unknown and flowing  
Through dreamer, through the dream

Stanza 25:  
The stars wheel overhead, patterns repeating  
Constellations fixed, navigating fates  
Astrology's conceit, that dots connect  
Tracing the sky, our lines reflect  
Yet stars too shift, circle in their cycles  
No stasis in heaven's machine precise  
All flows, Star River turning, turning  
No certainty, save change unending   
We pattern finders, join dots that aren't   

Stanza 26:
This world, a shared dream or solipsism?  
Do other minds roam reality's wolds?   
Or phantoms conjured, meaning welling up  
Thought's own shadow, take care not to touch
Perhaps both views are but a sterile divide  
When through the lens of time we reside  
Bubbles of dreamstuff, imagined into form  
Waking, sleeping, both thoughts of the norm  
The waking dream, the best truth we're allowed

Stanza 27:  
The crowds flow by, blank faces passing  
Each life a novel written in secret tongue  
Inner worlds unsung, unknown, expanding  
Behind masks hung upon each faceless one
Are they but automatons, wind-up toys?  
Extras playing backdrop to my life's joys?    
Or sentient centers, vibrant-real as I?
Perspective veils reality's balanced tie  
Life glimpsed through keyholes, blind to the whole  

Stanza 28:
This earth, an island isolate no more  
Telescopes pierce the ocean of the skies  
Revealing myriad worlds unguessed before  
As perspective shifts, the old myths dies  
Once firmament, now depth inconceivable   
This cosmic view no less unbelievable  
No pearly gate, but wonders never ending  
Reality's true scope, ripe for ascending   
We but one branch in knowledge's great tree

Stanza 29:  
Each age reshapes the past's protean flow  
Static contours imposed on deeds long gone  
Heroes, villains crystallized from the unknown  
Simplifying, sharpening history's blurred song
Yet the past remains a landscape changeless  
Only our tracks across it are restless  
Projecting meanings, motives that shift  
No truth etched in time's ebb and flow  
The present's lens distorts what it would know

Stanza 30:
This mind, inspector and inspected  
Turning awareness back upon itself   
A hall of mirrors tunnel visioned  
At each glance, the seer also seen
No eye to watch the first reflection  
The regression tails off into abstraction  
Yet who stares back down this endless corridor?  
Instance or illusion or something more?  
The looker, itself another backend tool

Stanza 31:
Perception, this guessing game we all play
Reality's Rubik's Cube endlessly twisted  
Sight and sound and feeling all say  
Put the patterns in neat order if we're gifted
Yet no facet or row solves the cosmic cube   
No peeking round its back to check our moves
For it's the guessing that gives grandeur birth  
The working, not the solution, reveals life's worth
Not the answer, but the questioning wink

Stanza 32:
The heart, an unwatched pot, liable to overflow  
Passion bubbles up, spilling over us  
We're caught in feeling's undertow  
Carried away by the rush  
Yet if we turn down emotions' flame  
And simply allow each breath the same  
Accept the currents flow where they go  
Not grasping or pushing away the flow  
Equanimity flowers, burning cool   

Stanza 33:
Each breath, the bellows fanning life's bright flame
Oxygen rushing in, carbon billowing out   
The simplest of acts, this breathing game  
Bodies built around continuity, never doubt
Yet peer within this automatic realm   
And a stranger landscape reveals itself  
Particles emerging, vanishing, helter-skelter      
Causes unchecked, only probabilities felt  
The chaos of chance, the quantum's fey reign  

Stanza 34:  
History's river, civilizations rising, falling  
Mighty rivers reduced to barren beds  
New ages etching their layers on all  
Sediment and skeletons of ages fled  
Yet history has no foreordained conclusion  
No matter the messianic delusion  
It's choices bend its course, even now  
Possibilities seeding from each act, each vow
The future's latent poems, waiting our pen    

Stanza 35:  
This world, a masterpiece painted over itself   
Palimpsest of possibilities and might-have-beens  
Traces hint of older contours now unfelt  
Just the top coat gleams while the past dims
Each moment's choice conceals alternate routes  
The path abandoned vanishes from view  
Yet wandering may find it freshly revealed  
A glimpse beneath the layers time concealed   
Many maps overlay, awaiting our footsteps  

Stanza 36:
The mind philosophizes, seeking stable truth   
Arrows shot at Being's unknown bullseye  
Concepts plumb reality's ancient roots   
Hoping reason illumines existence's dark eye  
Yet truth bursts bonds, flows wild, untamed  
No concept its raging whitewater harnesses   
Words and logic mere shadows on the cave  
Fingers pointing to a moonlight's path they cannot pave  
Thought's stream mirrors just a facet in each wave

Stanza 37:  
Is the eye that sees the world itself seen?
Does dreamer's awareness illuminate the dream?
Subject and object married, it would seem
Lover and beloved forever twinned  
Yet inner doesn't turn to spy upon itself  
A foundational blindness, the only health  
For seer cannot be reduced to another seen
To gaze inward infinitely to careen  
The first reflection's face forever mystery

Stanza 38:
Each day a thread woven into time's tapestry  
Moments like shuttles passed back and forth  
We leave our colored traces orderly  
Until the final end cut of death's shears  
Yet peering behind the stretched threads  
Reveals a tangled mass of knots  
No beginnings or endings, just connected strands  
Loose ends abandoned, flaws neatly planned  
Woven not linear, but knots all the way down  

Stanza 39:  
Reality sits inside perception's cage  
The eye tames, transforms, all it surveys    
The wild unknown swallowed in capture's maw  
Thought's empire no mysteries withdraw
Yet the knower builds with its own clay  
No truth outside mind's sculpting sway  
No shapes but those awareness molds  
No cosmos not perception's child  
All that is, sight fashioned from blindness

Stanza 40:  
The road crosses the meadow, we say  
Solid black asphalt, verge lines neat  
Journey measured from here to far away  
Each mile marked, the path under feet  
Yet now I wonder who decreed this divide  
Did we ask the meadow what paths it would cut?  
Perhaps to the grasses, no borders inside  
Just one tapestry, with cars paths through shut  
Roads go where they're laid, but meadows remain  

The deer isn't crossing the road, the road crosses the meadow.  
Things are not always as they seem at first glance. Look deeper, challenge assumptions. Reality's truth waits within.













   The poem is part of a full version found in the book “Homo Sapiens” Part Part I - XVIII, written by Mawphniang Napoleon. This book is part of the popular “Homo Sapiens” book series, which can be purchased online at various online bookstores, such as Amazon. The book is available for purchase for those who are interested in reading the complete version of the poem. Remember to get all the books from the “Homo Sapiens” series, as well as other books by the same author.   So, don’t hesitate and get a copy today from one of the many online bookstores.   Khublei Shihajar Nguh,  (Dhanewad  )(Thank you )