Venn Diagrams
How many must there have been
since the birth of all experience?
These bright little splinters of consciousness,
all different, each sealed in a self-addressed envelope?
And how is it that, whilst some walk the waking world,
attending the private viewings of the movies of their lives,
others are frozen between reels,
held in the suspended animation
of a dreamless sleep.
Ah – you’ll tell us, won’t you,
that our thoughts are but the passing-places in the dreams
of some almighty being, drops in the vast ocean
of Universal Awareness, or that our feelings are bee-lings
strategically placed in the honeycomb
of the collective consciousness…
Put down the Crystals and the Hopi Ear Candles,
and no-one will get hurt.
I cannot bring myself to believe that we are merely the lawless spores
of some Great Cosmic Foot-Fungus:
Surely it is more mystic, more miraculous
to think how simultaneous and independently aware
is every single mind upon this Earth:
That we are each alive, and each inhales
a wholly different world with every breath:
Like the circles in the Venn diagrams;
the stage magician’s amazing linking rings:
each of us, the sound of one hand clapping:
Alone, always – but forever overlapping.
