BODHISATTVA WEST photo: "Crescent City" by Tim Goodman
Go ahead,
ask me if I care about
the filthy town they came to,
my great grandfather, again a butcher,
my great grandmother ashamed
of her pierced ears.
Clear across the continent,
I sit on a mountaintop
following my breath
and eyeing the vast Pacific.
Ask me if I care
that this breath first hitchhiked
across the Atlantic
inside two Polish teenagers.
What does it have to do with
this mountain laurel,
my body next to it,
dissolving,
that breath ready to leap again?
