Am I a Buddhist? (alt title: Why We Go to Theater)

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 Am I a Buddhist? (Alternative title: Why We Go To the Theater)
~

”Is this seat taken?”

Judy smiles, says no

and my affection for her blooms

over the terrible time she’s having

arranging her coat. 

“Maybe you can put it over your legs,

like a blanket?” I offer 

in spite of my earnest hope

only moments before to engage

with no one and nothing and sit

in a dark theater like a chair.

~

———-/—/——————— I was thinking, what if the daisy bush knows from the time she’s a seed, the same way her mother knows from the time she’s a seed and her mother before that, that the morning glory seed would be planted next to her and would be in need of a way up?

~

By the end of the play I 

cherish Judy

how her stories spiral, unfurl

double back upon one another and twist

the details into plaits she arranges across families

across times. Her son, his wife

Her mother, her husbands father,

A daughter, a grandchild,

thirteen, six, birth, now.

She’ll be one hundred in 2044

a mere nineteen years from now.

Will her Jim still take her to plays? 

Will the stories she repeats still end with

a man, all festive, and even at first meeting,

sashaying her around a crowded room

introducing everyone to his new daughter?

As the house lights dim and the actors

take their places, will she still whisper

furtive and urgent “his parents

were wonderful people.”

—-/////————————- What I am saying is what if it’s this knowing that another plant, another being, relies on her growth and effort to free themselves from suffering, to know a perpetual happiness… what if that’s what compelled the daisy bush to spread her shoots and reach? 

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