Myths, Lies and Instant Karma

In my son’s karate class, his Sensei warned a student
who had kicked his sparring partner a little too robustly
that it would soon be his partner’s turn and he just might
experience some rather painful instant karma.

The adults all laughed, but I’ve been thinking
about it since, how the older we get the more
we think we can control karma by delaying
or preventing its arrival, when in actuality
all we do is dull the impact or deny its existence,
ultimately making little difference in the outcome,
because another name for karma is cause and effect;
A occurs; B follows; it’s hard to avoid laws of nature.

As children, we learned our lessons the hard way;
if you licked the frost-chipped metal on the monkey
bars, it would rip your tender taste buds clean off
as you panicked and tried to reverse, when you fell
off the wooden swing and sat up just as it came sailing
back, a whole day’s worth of memories, erased in an instant
as the three-inch thick board cracked you upside the head.

When you kept poking your brother in the back seat
of the car while your mother yelled at you to quit it
or she was going to pull over, she really was, but you kept
going at it until she really did, making you get a switch
from a roadside tree yourself and bend over to take your instant
karmic punishment while your sisters and brothers snickered
at you from the rearview window of the beige VW wagon.

Those were the days, weren’t they? We understood full well
if we kept pushing it, something would eventually give
and we would pay for our lack of judgment, but lately it seems
we've forgotten. It’s all about sneaking by, cheating fate,
hoping we won’t be found out; but really, who are we fooling?

Certainly not our own souls and I bet God’s not buying our act either.