How to Become
a Buddha
Just so, calamity turns toward calmness.
First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does.
Jane Hirshfield
“All the Difficult Hours and Minutes”
Benevolent don’t you
like the quiet of that word it’s almost
intention how it’s nearly an unheard
sigh and how unintentioned a monk
dissolving in the morning
smoke listening listen she
keeps her spine aligned
breathing she keeps railings
raised allowing
the lowering like ropes
below the coffin their
strength is in their wait
their weight is in the fist grips of
stoics-for-the-day who un-
able to stay step
back walk away palms red
as tiger stripes in the dusking
grass or as saffron as the sleeve
of the Buddha who
before he was
the Buddha exchanged
his rich robes
with the homeless man
and before he strode
off (the homeless man or
was he dead or does that
tell me matter) took up
the rope on the side
of the road took it up
to pull it through his palm
to feel if it was all real to feel
the fire raise the skin when it all slips
through to kill himself again
through to kill himself again
and again a naked
rich man standing
under a sun a moon
a set circulation
of blood and stars and began
to walk, for days then years
toward the Banyon
the benevolent waiting
for him to come and become
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