Smoke from a Nonexistent Fire
By Don Iannone

If you've ever watched something live,
you've also watched it die.
But not in the sense that living and dying exist
as independent phenomena separated by anything real.
There is no separate reality underlying anything.
It is all part of one.
You and I are but fictitious actors
on a make believe stage,
performing before an imagined audience.
That's all.
But if this is true,
what does this leave us?
We are left with our own impermanence--
our illusively fugitive state of being.
We live by believing
that our minds can know their own reality.
But what are these notions?
All are but consciousness
rising and falling in response to itself,
like smoke from a nonexistent fire.
And this poem--
has it not reached its end?
Yet your mind wanders on,
seeking more than is really here.
Rest in your unknowing, and there
find peace in your emptiness.