By Paul Tran
You turn to face the shore on the bench beside me.
A pine past the edge of a cliff climbs singed air toward an unseen sun.
A ship adrift in the distance alone berths itself.
Branches reach and keep reaching like a woman with eighteen arms.
The bow is a woman with no head or arms.
A right hand readies a sword to strike the three evils.
It must be nice to not carry or care—
A left hand points to a book about the nature of nature in a dead language.
To have no sense—
The book is shut.
Yet sensed by wave and wind that can’t halt—
The sword is wisdom.
Done to, done for, done—
She is the Mother of Seventy Million Buddhas.
She is Victory.
Motherless—
Wood cut into folds of wet drapery suggests her true form underneath.
Apprentice of flesh and agent of fantasy—
Her right leg lifts to step forward.
Played dumb, played dead, played Death on a water buffalo the color of water—
Her left leg leans as she is stepping forward.
Traded redemption to be redeemer—
She steps forward.
The Mother gave up being a Buddha to stay as moonlight
On that autumn night when Victory gave up serving a goddess
With an acropolis of snakes coiled in olive branches
To be her own wisdom until the wheel is wrecked
And the long war is won—
Spokes shattered—
Long chains melted in fire that had to be taken from gods—
Mules singing, mewling, gasping as they run free—
Swords hissing, cooling in a pool of early snow—
She will stay and mother.
She will serve herself.
Every child is hers.
Every servant taking up arms against a titan is her.
You want to be the pine; I want to be the ship.
You want only your child and I only want my mother.
Why can’t we want what we can’t have?
Visible are the pine and ship moving and not moving in place.
It’s not because we care and carry too much to sense
The true form, playing dead and dumb so long
We played ourselves.
Invisible are the roots gripping the cliff and the anchor.
A lover promised you’d meet on that steel bridge
Bombed that first night of ice at the end of autumn
In the next life. Two people facing
The same direction can face different things:
No love. No promise. Just steel
And night and ice. Not the end—
In this life, for any visible thing there are many invisible things
Pulling in the opposite direction to help it
Go or stay, a set—
I’m your cliff. Set in place—
I’m your anchor. Set in motion.
Love is holding tight, holding on, holding—
Wisdom is setting free.
You can be loved or free. It’s your happiness
My heart is dead
Set on.
