a Found poem, for his Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama
the same crow in the morning awakens us.
the same bowl of rice. tell me a story.
you never cried.
on the roof a pair of crows nested when
you were born. like before.
a door speaks before it opens. listening.
he says he wants to go where heaven begins.
you are here to love all living things.
mother mother why do you leave me here?
these shoes are mine. too big, but mine.
to look is to have confidence in one’s
own ability to end suffering. all beings
desire happiness.
separation has an abundant face.
I don’t want you to go.
what can I do? I am only a boy.
I will take those sheep. all of them.
inside my care.
I write without writing. I write words inside thoughts.
I write air. I give my breath to you.
make no barrier where a face is meant to shine.
to l o v e it takes a long time.
how long holiness? I don’t yet know.
all things will become nothing. I will become nothing.
yet here I am, inside you. we say our names, continuous.
the moon is full.
these stones we pile for you, saying where we have been,
saying our way home again. change is this much high.
we give this sand back to you.
this home. these fingertips.
we pour ourselves into the seas.
I am a reflection of the moon on water.
why? to be a good man.
neil reid © 2015 november
footnotes:
defined: Found poems are normally an assembly of pseudo-random other words and phrases just as incidentally found in your environment. they are thus by nature unplanned, rather “found”.
this poem is my result while watching a film, “Kundun“, directed by Martin Scorsese, and about the life of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Completely unintended by me, yet watching, some words just wanted pen & paper. some are literal quotes, some slightly rephrased, some just my own (my departure from a true Found poem).
“the wish fulfilling jewel” is another name for the Dalai Lama.
