Reincarnation

An infant soul drowses
in clear Hands,
waiting

for a return to human life,
or for a return from human life
back to the Center.

Which it will be
it does not know
in this moment before it wakes.

It knows that if it is destined
to return to a human form,
it will not have peace like this again

for a long while —
but it will have sunsets and dawns 
and seas and snows and love

and striving and sweat,
and perhaps worse things but 
perhaps better things too.

It knows that if it is destined
to leave human form behind
and return to the Center,

what will come will likely be
unchanging, and sweet as
honey, and unchanging, and 

soft as a warm spring, and
unchanging, and filled with
joy, and unchanging.

The infant soul
opens its eyes as it is released by
those shining Hands 

into its next place. 
What it knows then
is a question,

given those possibilities,
about what to hope for 
and what to dread.