As I trek

Through Nihon, the misty Eastern country

My mind is elsewhere

On trvial matters made larger in my head: Finance, education, finity of everything

It all begins to drain me

Infect me

Rattle me to the bone

Anger me immeasurably

And yet having been reduced to that fragile state,

I come upon Koya-san, a sacred mountain

The refuge of ancient Buddhist wisdom and nirvana

As I walk through the weathered graveyard

I bat the buzzing flies away,

my brain still buckling under the weight of imagined woes

it stretches on for miles

an illusion that the frustrating finity of the past has been left behind

yet is it an illusion?

Countless monuments and statues to deities and days gone by I walk past

All content

To me they seem stagnant

but their aura and expressions suggest otherwise

After walking long enough,

I come to an obsidian statue, slick with pure water

In one hand, he holds sword, help upright

In the other, he holds a chain

I've always swatted the flies around my eyes, but as I stare into his clear burning gaze,

I realize

The flies haven't once landed on my face, disturbed my sight

They only exist in my peripherals, as a halo given to me by the mountain

As though the path I've taken,

The one that was seemingly endless,

Shepherded me into the spirit world

The being before me glares

Pierces me and

Reaches into my spirit

Taps into my well of rage and frustration

And through pure fire

transforms it into transcendence.

The worldly concerns have faded, 

False perception cut off

Reduced to the insignificant things that they really always were

And the flies

They're my friends