‘Lasting Karma’: A Poem by Thomas Beckman

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Lasting Karma

What’s the key to living life that matters?
How do we spend this precious time on earth?
Listen to the lessons of our fathers
—they illustrate the path from birth to death.
So fleeting is the beauty of our bodies
which amble down a trail from dust to dust,
followed by expressions of the mind we
immortalize for scholars to discuss.
At deeper levels hides our energy
found in vital functions like the breath,
revealed in heroism when we bravely
renounce our precious lives to save the rest.
Beneath awareness lies eternal bliss
—that soft, undying feeling that persists.

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Thomas Beckman is a physician in Rochester, Minnesota. His poems are published or forthcoming in Annals of Internal Medicine, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Midwest Zen, and Plexus Literary Review.