Savage, or Thoughts on Reincarnation
I want to believe I’m on my last life.
What is nirvana if not a kind of death?
In a past life, a stranger asked the Buddha
for his children. The Buddha offered him his eyes.
Then, pulling the children, screaming,
from the shivering rice barrels, he gave them
away. Did the children ever forgive him?
Did they have to because he was the Buddha?
I stay awake, listening to my brother’s breath
as he sleeps in my corridor. A 6 am flight,
a half-hug in the parking lot. I want one more life.
This is the problem with reincarnation:
you don’t know if what you’ve lost
is lost forever. Unless, I guess, you’re the Buddha.
His children escaped, by the way. Hid from
their possessor in the cane grass, the silk reeds,
and wove their way back home. I think
they hugged their mother. I think the Buddha
demanded understanding. I had to, he likely said.
I wonder who they became in their next life.
I wonder if the siblings stayed together,
across this ever-shortening thread, never striving
for nirvana because to achieve it would mean
a kind of forsaking. And they learned—
learned too young that fathers aren’t
to be trusted. In each life, the same
karmic cycle. Silk reeds become waves
become veranda floors. Then: the learned
leaving. My brother and I are always
looking for the ones left behind,
even as we’re leaving. Don’t worry.
The Buddha is not the forgiving kind.
We don’t care to be forgiven.
