4
Someday I will no longer exist in this embodied form. What are the implications of this? Death is the loss of everything and everyone that is dear to me. From the moment we are born, we become passionately attached. However, as Stephen Levine, author of A YEAR TO LIVE, is fond of saying, "If we don't learn to let go during our lifetime, we get a crash course at the end." So true! Death awareness haiku can be a study of impermanence, the fact that everything arises and passes away; that there is nothing to hold on to. This is the Buddha's holy truth.

Haiku is rooted in this moment and each moment is transient, already in flight.

checkout time is noon
I turn in the key
and everything else

With a tinge of anxiousness, I remind myself:

don't wait
don't wait
don't wait