Climbing higher,
I despair of my future life.
Despairing of my current life,
I climb higher.
Caught in a cycle
of secular samsara, I cannot
find the way to enlightenment.

A fear of suffering propels me,
yet that fear traps me.
I am not at liberty
to take my freedom back;
I cannot simply walk out
into the silence of morning
and hear only that – silence.

I see the snow beginning to cover
the stone Buddha
that sits on the stone wall.
In a few more hours,
it will be unseen,
immersed in a cold
woven cloth of frozen patterns.
And I am afraid that the first flake
that fell upon the stone Buddha’s head
this morning
also fell upon mine.