‘Straining to Photograph a Distant Lake and Trees From a Moving Train’ by Damian Robin

The lake cradles symmetries of spring trees.
The sky scries the membrane of wide waters:
unseen breezes, like me, are passers-by
somehow touching the lake, trees, reeds, clouds, sky.
My eyes focus on these without shutters,
curved lenses, flat prisms, mirrored degrees,
or a cam’ra.

Time is ev’rywhere. Chances come and go.
Human measures don’t hold change; they’re certain
to follow the universe and The Way:
birth, stasis, degeneration, decay:
and the core of Falun Gong: Zhen-Shan-Ren*.
Our image of the cosmos moves so slow
it’s like a photo.

The lake acts still. Rests at perceived bound’ries.
A discrete life. Its thoughts float and stir,
share vast heavens, multi-universes,
worlds’ peripheries, karmic reverses –
images appearing out of nowhere,
or trays of developing chemistries
in a darkroom.

My smartphone can’t pin down this transience.
Digitalised snaps are surface soap suds,
their skins can’t cope with what’s seen from the train.
Though other unseen dimensions retain
this spring moment, I strain to see buds.
Yet I know they’re there – hiding their essence
like pixels.

*Zhen-Shan-Ren, Truth-Compassion-Forbearance,
the universal principle of the new universe
espoused by Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa.

Damian Robin is a journalist and poet living in England.