Indra’s Net

Monarch, with a flutter of your wing
you seed a hurricane.
Lion, your roar is audible in Andromeda.
Bacterium, you hitch a ride on a meteor.
Meteor, your impact snuffs an epoch.
Worm—
yes worm, yes apple, yes singularity:
everything is a gem in Indra’s net,
a diamond reflecting in its many facets
all the other diamonds, and their facets,
reflecting (and containing)
every other diamond and its facets.
Although we blunder and misjudge,
however we weep or cower,
still we are nestled here,
the living and the dead, in trillions,
reflecting in our many facets
all the other gigatrillion facets—
don’t trouble your mind with the numbers!
This is all metaphor.
Metaphor, a noun derived from the Greek,
meaning borne along with, after, between, among
as in a net, perhaps,
an infinite lattice strewn with infinite jewels.

                                                        —kbb