“Come through the gates of drowning,”

the teacher says, so we cross with lotus

rafts and abandon them at the water’s edge

where love’s refrain is whispering: The world

begins and then it ends. Begins and ends again.

Xuanzang Contemplates the Wonder of Sugar on His Return Home after Sixteen Years

Here, on the roof of the world,

Xuanzang sees lights gleaming.

They could be monasteries,

or Arcadian kingdoms, or a palace

of drumbeats skirting the sands

of the great and vigilant Taklamakan.

They are something: sixteen years

and 10,000 miles away from home;

from cypress trees and hunts for treasure

in the Luo River. Xuanzang is old

and young now; keeper of the past,

bearer of the present.

He follows the bones of animals

laid out as beacons by caravans

carrying spice and indigo.

And when the dust storms rise,

wrapping their latticework of mirage

around the tamarisks,

he dreams terrible things:

of his elephant drowning,

his 657 manuscripts unfurling

like prayer flags,

scattering Sanskrit kisses

across the sky.

Was it so long ago he passed the Pamirs,

the Oxus, those mighty Bamiyan Buddhas?

When he cast himself down by the Bo tree

to weep? What was this new burning then,

spreading through the water tables

of his sandy body? Something miraculous —

those water reeds that produce honey

without bees. He reaches for it now,

deep in the folds of his travelling robes.

And it is like touching that sweetness

called childhood — a piece of nephrite jade

cradled in his river hands.

Cutting Broccoli

Between this moment and the next

there’s always space for a lover’s return,

though you may no longer weep for him,

or ache to lie down in the woods with him.

But say he chooses to appear on a Sunday

afternoon, when you’re walking upstairs

for lunch; cutting broccoli into perfect spears

while the rice in the cooker is boiling.

Would you ask first that he strip away

the layers of the past, the times you washed

together in darkness between whispered words

and the husky calls of nightfall’s birds.

Would you say how you’ve been waiting

for something to grow from the silence —

nothing phenomenal — just cracks of light

in the long doorways you’ve been walking through.

And now that he’s here, do you let him

stand in the house like a newborn god,

carrying the empty weight of sky

in his eyes, saying nothing is irreversible.

Do you offer your impermanent body

against the solid frame of the kitchen door,

allow him to fall easily — into the future —

knowing the moment never disappears.

Lesson 2: Learning Mudras in Bhutan

Here, in this room of Bhutanese elders,

I learn to catch my breath again, allow my fingers

to be shaped into lotus-flower offerings

to the sky. And when I can do this 108 times without

guidance, the woman behind me — cataract-beset,

toothless, wrinkled — who’s been picking stray flecks

of fleece off my back, touches me in a way you can’t;