The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2011

The Possibility of Blessing, after Divorce

(Sera Monastery, Lhasa)

On a plate, roasted barley, plastic bag

of yak butter, marigolds, coins, rice.

In the center stands an ear of corn. I open

my purse, add a few bills to the paper money.

A monk twists cotton wicks. Warm smell

of liquid butter, light of burning lamps.

Over stained walls, the black residue.

In last night’s dream, these words appeared

on my arm: Evening, bell, horse.

Then you spoke, My message is written

in a code that will be hard to decipher.

Still asleep, I thought, Wait a minute,

what the fuck are you doing here?

Now, the chanting voices. We crouch through

a low doorway, emerge, in semidarkness,

by a huge foot, stare up at his robed body,

shining golden face. Maitreya, Buddha

of the future whose far-off eyes regard us all

with love. We kneel, one by one, press our brows

to the same patch of cushion. The deep indentation

all our foreheads have made, the dark smudge

in white silk.

Why do I still dream of you?

In fall and winter, you were the cause

of every sorrow as I walked through wet leaves.

I thought I was done with remembering.

Your step on the porch, click of your key,

or I'd get there first and open the door.

I don’t want to do it over.

This isn’t that kind of regret.

A monk paints names in gold

down narrow lengths of red ribbon.

I pay, ask him to paint Michael.

The spelling takes us

on steep paths.

When he holds the finished ribbon

over a burning lamp, a thin curl

of smoke rises. Letter by letter, as if

sending you this, I watch your name

slowly disappear.

Catherine Freeling