in her shoes at the local community college
for Women’s History Month. With the other men
who signed up for the event, he rummages through boxes
of women’s shoes looking for a pair that will fit.
You want socks with those, bro? asks the office
assistant, as he gingerly slips on a pair of open-toe
leopard print wedge platforms. He wiggles his foot around
a couple of times before he can slip it in; his bunion
always gives him trouble. They’re getting ready to walk
around the quad, past the student dorms and down
to the plaza in the middle of the mall, where a SAFE
counselor will hand out pamphlets with statistics
on how many women on college campuses get raped,
assaulted, victimized in domestic relationships.
The Buddha is disturbed by these stories. He cannot
fathom the hatred and the violence, the displaced
self-loathing that seeks its target in female
bodies, the suffering. He recalls the brothels
along the coast, the sad eyes of women in the windows;
the way, in his own hometown, there are still fathers
who think daughters don’t need to go to school,
households where girls are made to take their sleeping
pallet outside to the porch or behind the kitchen
when they have their period. He hitches his robe
a little higher around his ankles; he adjusts
his stride, determined not to wobble or fall.
You seem to be carrying a lot of guilt,
the therapist says to the Buddha ten minutes
into her first session. She sighs, tentatively
massaging the sides of the stress ball she has been given.
Is it that obvious? she asks, even if she knows
the answer. She thought she was doing a pretty good job
sitting still, holding her fears and anxieties in her mind
without judging, without undue attachment, without blame
(well, ok, trying). It is so difficult for the heart
to be in more than one place at any given time, more
if you are a mother: every hurt hurts, every flutter
ravages the surface on which the days must progress
with their sometimes terrible banality, with their small
and therefore acute reprieves of joy. Meanwhile, the hours
spread like a cowl, like the shadow of a cobra sitting
just a handspan away, its breath the breath of the eternal
that all these years passed mistakenly as merely a nagging
voice: parent hovering in the doorway of the impatient
child, gardener bent over a tray of new seeds; bird
nudging the fledgling closer to the end of the branch.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
The Buddha thinks of his trust fund
“In my father’s dwelling three lotus ponds were made purposely for me. Blue lotuses bloomed in one, red in another, and white in the third. I used no sandalwood that was not of Kaasi. …Night and day a white parasol was held over me so that I might not be touched by heat or cold, dust, leaves or dew.”
Does it make it easier to renounce a thing
when you know you could always come back to it?
Does it salve the conscience to throw away a gift
when you tell yourself there’s always more
where that came from? Does it make you braver
to say you are burning that bridge, walking
away from the stays of family and kin, the arms
of a lover; the leaf-shaded neighborhood where you
played with friends in childhood, the village
that knew you and everyone else by name?
Is your body more comforted by thin garments
worn alike in sun and rain and winter chill?
Does it satisfy your hunger to eat a meal
begged for plating on a leaf instead of on china
laid on a linen-covered table? And is a small
mound of rice sprinkled with salt more filling
a repast than a rich stew flavored with cardamom
and butter? Do you recall, in college not so long ago,
your literature teacher describing the tragic hero
as someone whose eventual fall from grace is made
more trenchant because he has something to lose?
Isn’t it true that everything spurned with such
careful intention turns into a more industrious
ambassador for the republic of unfulfilled desire?
~ for Karen An-hwei Lee
In response to Via Negativa: Homeless.
Five Worry Beads
This is for the whites of eggs I failed to coax
to airiness, so they puddled at the bottom of the bowl
This is for the ring of silver I was given
but lost one day in a shower stall at the gym
This is for the gate I thoughtlessly let swing, that hit
the child traipsing behind full on the forehead
This is for the years that stretched like doors
in a dream hallway, so you couldn’t hear my voice
This is for the compass rose that turned and the weather
vane that tilted when I opened my arms to embrace the wind
Mindful
The wind plays in the accordion
branches. An icy rain pelts the road.
The seed rattles in its pod
the only mantra that it knows.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
[poem temporarily hidden by author]
In response to Via Negativa: Harbingers.
The Buddha considers with all seriousness
the variety of decisions that revolve around desire:
Nutella chocolate chip with sea salt, pistachio lemon
creme, or cinnamon amaretto swirl? Where is human nature
so weak as in the ice cream section of a 24-hour grocery store?
And really, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg,
only one layer of this rainbow-shingled world shiny with neon
and digital contraptions, sprinkled with add-ons. He is tempted
to pack up his new digs in the city and tell his young family
that they’re moving to the country, to an island in Micronesia,
somewhere they can hang laundry to dry on the line, collect rain
water in barrels, plant their own tomatoes, squash, and bitter
melons, send the kids to school and watch them walk down
the dirt path in flip-flops without worrying about
their safety— But he’s promised his wife he’ll try
to find a way to live in the jangly heart of the metro,
practice what he’s always talking about in coffee shops:
simplification and letting go, right where it is. And right
where it is is right here, right now: in many ways, it is
the biggest challenge to The Noble Eightfold Path, which all
the teachings describe as “the most straightforward approach”
to human life and suffering, except that the latter are anything
but straightforward. As for instance, even in this small
frozen section of the universe, where desire after desire
jostles for his attention and his wallet— blackberry cobbler,
peaches and cream, orange creamsicle, black walnut crunch—
he knows the impossibility of satisfaction, the reverie
that purchase promises but cannot in the end provide.
The therapist explains to the Buddha
the concept and effects of “Catastrophizing”
using references to Chicken Little, Pooh
Bear, Wile E. Coyote, and The Roadrunner.
He understands everything perfectly in his mind,
having had many occasions to dispense similar advice
to others through the years. Nonetheless he is charmed
by this new cast of colorful characters and how they
play out one worst case scenario after another—
There is a crack in the ceiling of heaven! The sky
is falling! There is a raincloud growing larger above
my head! He likes when the therapist explains
that the honey-colored bear with the ample belly
resembling his in some art works, is our baseline condition:
at rest, without stress, comfortable and at ease in the wood
of the world. But the agitated chicken, the wound-up coyote
and the perennially ruffled bird are ready
not only to leap on the first train of worry, but also
to ride the same crooked track that has gouged itself
so deep into the landscape it has no other
destination but down. Just stay on the platform,
says the therapist whose first name in Welsh
means pure-hearted: Not so fast. Let’s make a list
of why your world right now is not about to end.
[poem temporarily hidden by author]
In response to Via Negativa: Salt.
Who will carry for me
when I can no longer carry, who will fold
the sleeves of garments back and away
from the wrists that ferry such quantities
of water, passing them down and along
the line? And who will attend the calendar
of hours between one shuttering of the sky
to the next, rouse to brief screenings
of air and light, gather the abundant
moisture of clouds for softness in future days?
Who will pin on the breast of the querulous
moment one fragrant lotus whose meaning
is All, in time, will be well?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.