THE BUDDHA

THE BUDDHA

The Buddha sits in cross-legged wisdom,
Smiling by the roadside and very much alive.

I pass him in a hurry, breathless and heaving,
Weighed down by my baggage and my bitter daydreams.

Scattered in my focus, humbled by my fractured schemes.

The Buddha knows the riddle and holds the answer tight to his vest,
While we scatter to and fro, suffering cardiac arrest.

We wonder if there’s more, as clear water laps the daylight shore,
Caressing the sand in calm repose.

I hear the seabirds overhead, I smell the fragrance of the rose.


Looking out my mother’s kitchen window,
I see a lone deer napping by the hedge,
Sleeping there in sweet surrender.
Believing in the flow of life, a sight divine and tender.

I pack it all away, somewhere deep within.
The clear water, the seabirds, the rose, the deer.

They resonate mysteriously,
Tunneling under my doubting veneer,
Making sense of my pilgrimage here.

The Buddha sits in cross-legged wisdom,
Smiling at me everywhere.
In the sea, in the garden, in my mother’s backyard.

The Buddha winks at me, in the sultry heat of the asphalt jungle.
So rotund, so peaceful, so very much alive.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2008
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED