The coward,
he flees at first light.
His strides
as quiet as his convictions.
He fears life,
the infinite unknown,
vicissitudes of pleasure and pain.
So he runs.
Rather than open
to the spectrum of bliss and chaos,
the marvels and madness,
the inescapable interplay of yin and yang;
he closes his door to the world.
He is armored by illusion -
a mask made of clouds,
a defiant independence.
His silhouette fades into the distance.
He can carry only
the weight of emptiness.

The brave man
stays to fight.
Even if the battle is gone,
he faces the truth.
Amidst loss and pain,
he leans in, heart-first;
to hear the final echoes,
to feel the lonely silence -
of something once born,
now dead.
He breathes the time and space of the past into his lungs,
his bones,
his blood,
his being.
In his exhale resides the sun.
Slowly,
with each new breath,
he dusts the soil with gold.
Resilience,
love,
humanity,
grow from the ashes
within.