Meeting The Buddha by Craig van Rooyen
A man hikes a mountain road with his daughter.She is two and rides his back. Prayer flags makeriver stones of their ears. But the poem does not start here.
At some unmarked bend in the sky, the girldrops a stuffed animal. Nor is this the beginning.Only family can fathom the scale of this loss.
Others who measure suffering in epidemics andbattlefield casualties understandably take no notice.Yet for two years the girl has never entered sleep
without the presence of the cotton rabbit.Mornings, her parents must speak to the stuffedpiece of cloth before they are allowed to address
their daughter. When the girl prays, she mouthsthe rabbit’s secret totem name in gratitude.Needless to say, the man spends all afternoon
tracing and retracing his ascent. And since,in the local dialect, he does not know the wordsfor “have you perhaps seen a furry pink bunny?” #Poetry
