Sun Streaming Through Patio Abutilons Onto Hotei’s Face At 7:40 AM - Brian McSweeney

[Larry Robinson]

Sun Streaming Through Patio Abutilons Onto Hotei’s Face At 7:40 AM

                                - for James Wright

 
Hotei, that big-bellied laughing Buddha,

Do you think he cares that he sits crooked

I say jauntily at the bottom of my rock pile

His grey concrete skin speckled green and black?

My wife asks can’t you clean him up?

It looks like you dumped him 

In that eyesore of a rock pile

Are you ever going to do something with that? 

I might but right now Hotei and I 

Are seeking enlightenment

Through the practice of non-doing.

And besides he looks cool on that crooked rock.

Did you notice how neatly I cut the hair of our Buddha tree

(A gift from your dreadlocked buddy twenty-five years ago)

So Hotei can see better as the hummers take the nectar

Flitting about from one Chinese lantern to the next?

But wouldn’t that Ace Hardware concrete cleaner

Get that nasty green and black mold off his face?

It might but right now Hotei and I 

Are retiring from the world of appearances,

Well at 7:40 a.m. the sun blew right through that charade.

I looked out my kitchen window to catch the busy hummers

And the sun was streaming onto the Buddha tree trunk

I was dumbstruck by Hotei’s shining face

Lit from within and without, his brilliance.

 
	- Brian McSweeney
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