How much is imagined

How much is imagined
Where is the substance
More a reality or illusion
Can we distinguish them
So intricately intertwined
When we look at things
What colors the image
Enhances or distorts
Pointing out reality
Or veiling in illusion
To elude experience
One moment it’s here
The next it will be gone
As if it never happened
But it’s cast in memory
More or less accurately
Possibly quite twisted
To suit circumstances
How it was in reality
Until it was all over
In the flow of life
Move on beyond
That one moment
Always to the next
Not linear like a river
But round concentric
For it is the sea of life
Where history meets
The prophecy of now
May be a blessing
In reality indeed.

“Time is not a river running inexorably to the sea, but the sea itself — the tides that appear and disappear, the fog that rises to become rain in a different river…
In circular time… stories are both history and prophecy, stories for a time yet to come. If time is a turning circle, there is a place where history and prophecy converge.”
— Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, pp. 206-207