This dewdrop world
is a dewdrop world
and yet, and yet ...

The brilliance of the poem is that, no matter the particular situation, the reader is left to contemplate how "and yet," personally applies.

It's all a wink of the cosmic eye, they say, but that mantra becomes a greater challenge when stuck in traffic, or facing a dire situation of survival, recovery and healing.

The outpouring of concern and assistance for the tsunami survivors, especially the children, reveals the loftier side of the human spirit.  And yet, why the lack of concern for the Iraqi children?

Is it that many people consider THEM "the enemy's children"? Do most worldwide charities quietly condone the war on Iraq?

As to the common folk, some of who genuinely find it easier to assist people coping with a non-partisan natural disaster, many probably don�t know where or how to give aid to Iraqi families and orphans who have been bombed out of their homes.

A websearch shows little at all, and if I did send some money somewhere: would I be considered as assisting the enemy? And yet, the victims and children are not really "enemies".

Then there are all the U.S. children, though presumably something is done for some of them on a day-to-day basis (apparently unworthy of news reporting.)

This planet is grappling with a severe case of segregated, schizophrenic, multiple-personality disorder (call it what you will) psychology.

There is US, a generic term for all the folks who have enough freedom and abundance to get by day-to-day on a higher than mere-survival level.

There is the U.S. with all its varieties of people and cultures, plus various factions within and without the government many of them victims and survivors of the current and past wars.

THEM is another loose category of tsunami victims and survivors, and THEM is also Iraqi victims and survivors.

There are plenty more of THEMs and yet  "and yet," prompts us to look beyond all of these illusory labels.

Global networks having search-and-rescue systems; less-than-emergency systems ready to go on command (like an army dedicated to preservation instead of destruction); food-and-supply banks (like our western rental-equipment stores) would go a long way toward helping others and encouraging acceptance of people around the globe, thus honoring them as precious tiny droplets in this "dewdrop world."

Issa, by the way, translates as "cup of tea" or "one bubble in steeping tea," and he aptly put forth a universal response to the notion of a flash-in-the-pan existence with little or no purpose.

Since Issa's One Bubble of Haiku has survived the years, what little gift might you bring forth?

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is the author of Singing an Epic of Peace a modern epic poem, author/edited Haiku One Breaths, and is working on an anthology Modern Muses: How Artists Become Inspired.  Mankh can be contacted at mankh@allbook-books.com