Satori is a Moth That Drowns in its Own Shadow

In the lamp-lit temple
of almost-enlightenment,
a moth performs its last koan —
wings beating questions
into the darkness it creates.

Each flutter casts
a thousand shadows,
each shadow births
a thousand moths,
until reality folds in on itself
like origami consciousness.

The moth thinks:
“I am the flame
I am the dark
I am the space between
wisdom and wings.”
But thinking is another shadow,
and shadows are hungry here.

In this moment
of infinite recursion,
enlightenment arrives
like a sudden drowning —
not in light or darkness,
but in the realization
that both are illusions
cast by the mind’s own flight.

The shadow deepens,
becomes an ocean
of unasked questions.
The moth’s wings,
now heavy with knowing,
cease their desperate morse code
against the void.