Bodh Gaya

I.

I am a shade of my former self, a twisted wanderer who craves the light

and Sadness is a lurking construct, a golem, who prowls the proud night
with swollen eyes
and a mouth of shrew
a thing of angles and bends, who drags its knuckles and cackles at the passing cars
alone, in shade, of the shade,
breathing in sighs and mumbling whispers into scattered neon leavings

Along State, in the Avenues, along the broad shoulders, University Hill,
the weary move in droves, shouldering the burden one ache at a time
Downtown everyone lies, everyone is a mask of shame and delight
Impish Lillith in her crowed and steepled glory
with burning eyes and blood on her hands

and I, I am just another face in the crowd, following
deep swell of the tidal pull
stalking Sadness into caves and pools

a withered thing, bald and broken, fighting for one more dawn to pull the shade

II.

The Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree, on the banks of smoking Ganges and was still

He saw not the life we see, all sharp edges and white and stable, no
but a life in motion, a pixalated universe, broken into a million shards

The sad, the lonely, the sick struggling with each breath
the dead and dying, the hungry who cry through broken teeth and gaping mouths,
the open hand, the forgotten whisper

And the Buddha touched his fingers to the earth and opened his mind

This is the world, a world of duhkha, a world swirling into the open eye of the Void
an eye that knows no closing, an eye that neither weeps nor blinks nor closes

And the Buddha knew it was so, that this world is a thing impermanent
of suffering from desire
of knowledge locked away inside, waiting for the right kind of vision to break through

And in his knowing, the Buddha awoke and was calm

Picking up his discarded sandals, he took the path down into Bodh Gaya


© JR Maston 2007