Koan for the Man Who Watched Himself Die

When I asked the monk

what follows death,

he struck the bell

and asked who was listening.

I said: the wind.

He said: then let the wind answer.

In the garden,

a stone pretends to be nothing.

The moss does not correct it.

I dreamed I drowned

in a river flowing upward.

Fish passed through my chest

without apology.

Was I dead?

Was I water?

The river did not ask.

At dawn, incense loosens

into a shape that almost remembers being human.

The bell rings again:

this time inside my bones.

I bow to the empty mat

where I expect myself to be sitting.

The sutra says:

form is a rumor told by light.

The Tao replies:

even the rumor must dissolve.

When I leave,

my footprints fill with rain:

small mouths

learning silence.

---

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores spirituality, myth, medicine, and the liminal spaces between belief and embodiment. Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, his writing often draws on Indigenous traditions, Eastern philosophy, and contemporary metaphysical questions. His poems have appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, Braided Way, Right Hand Pointing, The Orchards, Unbroken Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Texas, where he continues to write at the intersection of science, ritual, and the unseen.