Just as I wonder

whether it’s going to die,

the orchid blossoms

and I can’t explain why it

moves my heart, why suchpleasure

comes from one small bud

on a long spindly stem,one

blood red gold flower

opening at mid-summer,

tiny, perfect in its hour.

Even to a white-

haired craggy poet, it’s

purely erotic,

pistil and stamen, pollen,

dew of the world, aspoonful

of earth, and water.

Erotic because there’sdeath

at the heart of birth,

drama in those old sunrise

prisms in wet cedar boughs,

deepest mystery

in washing evening dishes

or teasing my wife,

who grows, yes, morebeautiful

because one of us will die.     

Half broken on thatsmoky night,

hunched over sake in aserviceman’s dive

somewhere in Naha, Okinawa,

nearly fifty years ago,

I read of the SaigonBuddhist monks

who stopped the traffic ona downtown thoroughfare

so their master, Thich Quang Dúc,could take up

the lotus posture in themiddle of the street.

And they baptized himthere with gas

and kerosene, and he strucka match

and burst into flame.

That was June, nineteen-sixty-three,

and I was twenty,  a U.S. Marine.

The master did not move,did not squirm,

he did not scream

in pain as his body wasconsumed.

Neither child nor yet aman,

I wondered to myOkinawan friend,

what can it possibly mean

to make such a sacrifice,to give one’s life

with such horror, but withdignity and conviction. 

How can any man enduresuch pain

and never cry and neverblink.

And my friend saidsimply, “Thich Quang Dúc

had achieved true peace.”

And I knew that nighttrue peace

for me would never come.

Not for me, Nirvana.This suffering world

is mine, mine to suffer inits grief.

Half a century later, Ithink

of BôTát Thich Quang Dúc,

revered as a bodhisattvanow— his lifetime

building temples, teachingpeace,

and of his death and thestatement that it made.

Like Shelley’s, his heartrefused to burn,

even when they burned hisashes once again

in the crematorium—his generous heart

turned magically to stone.

What is true peace, Icannot know. 

A hundred wars have comeand gone

as I’ve grown old. I beartheir burdens in my bones.

Mine’s the heart thatburns

today, mine the thirst, thehunger in the soul.

Old master, old teacher,

what is it that I’velearned?

I came here nearly fortyyears ago,

broke and half broken, havingchosen

the mud, the dirt road,alder pollen and

a hundred avenues of grayacross the sky

to be my teachers and mymuses.

I chose a temple made ofwords and made a vow.

I scratched a life inhardpan. If I cried

for mercy or cried out indelight,

it was because I was a manchoosing

carefully his way and his words,growing

as slowly as the trunks ofcedars

in the sunlit garden.

Let the ferns and themoss remember

all that I have lost orloved, for I carry

no regrets, no ambition tolive it

all again. I can’t make itbetter

than it’s been or will beagain

as the seasons turn and anold man’s heart

turns nostalgic as he sipshis wine alone.

I have lived inCascadia, no paradise

nor any hell, but both atonce and made,

as Elytis said, of thesame material.

A poor poet, I studiedwar and love.

But Cascadia is what I’mof.