I am somewhere southwest of Alaska
four hours outside Narita
and I notice him, three seats over
and a row behind, a middle seat,
yet the Buddha doesn’t seem to mind.
He sits calmly sipping his Chivas
and rubbing his round belly
his legs tucked neatly, lotus.
He smiles at me, lifting his glass
“one should not blindly seek pleasure,
nor should one avoid it
when it is thrust before him.”
He giggles as the edited version
of Kundun plays out on the small screen,
“it was nothing like that,” he says
“nothing at all like that, but that
is what they all want to see
so that is what they will see.”
He pours another Chivas
from the tiny bottle, then slides
it into the seat back in front of him,
“no doubt Richard Gere
will be waiting for me in Tokyo,
full of questions, always seeking
never stopping to see that when
he stops inquiring the answers
will all be clear to him, he could
as easily ride a snowboard to Nirvana.”
An hour later, the novel grown stale
a glance back, he still sits
a small child sucking on a pacifier
with that same smile, that same
little giggle, and drifts off to sleep.
Louis Faber is a poet and writer. His work has appeared in Cantos, The Poet (U.K.), Alchemy Spoon, New Feathers Anthology, Dreich (Scotland), Tomorrow and Tomorrow,), Defenestration, Atlanta Review, Glimpse, Rattle, Pearl, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
