The Boddhisattva of the Spices

Somewhere in this wicked world

Maybe in India, yes, say, India

A man or a woman

Yes, say, a woman

Has opened the back door of her small shop

A tea room.  Maybe a spice stand.  

Yes, say, a spice stand.

She is sitting on a bucket, or a burlap bag of spices

In the instant the eternal dawn

Which is always breaking somewhere

Breaks on her understanding.

In this moment, which is always this moment

In her left hand are her sorrows

In her right hand a cup of steaming  tea

She has become a secret saint.

Her eyes opened wide

For the first time she truly sips her tea.

The urban smells of the alley

And the other shops as they open wide

She smells them truly the way -

No good smells, no bad smells –

a baby would find them.

The rising swell of urban babble streams

She discovers she truly knows

For the first time.

She will never study the Sutras.

They don’t speak of her breasts

And the desperate babies they’ve nursed

Or the secret wounds of the heart.

She has not meditated

She has lived the eternal instant

Feeding and doing, including, including all things

In the sweep of her wide arms

The Bodhisattva of the spice bins

Opens her lips in this final triumphant life

“Oh?”

And

“Ah – hah!”