Savage, or Thoughts on Reincarnation

I want to believe I’m on my last life.

What is nirvana if not a kind of death?

In a past life, a stranger asked the Buddha

for his children. The Buddha offered him his eyes.

Then, pulling the children, screaming,

from the shivering rice barrels, he gave them

away. Did the children ever forgive him?

Did they have to because he was the Buddha?

I stay awake, listening to my brother’s breath

as he sleeps in my corridor. A 6 am flight,

a half-hug in the parking lot. I want one more life.

This is the problem with reincarnation:

you don’t know if what you’ve lost

is lost forever. Unless, I guess, you’re the Buddha.

His children escaped, by the way. Hid from

their possessor in the cane grass, the silk reeds,

and wove their way back home. I think

they hugged their mother. I think the Buddha

demanded understanding. I had to, he likely said.

I wonder who they became in their next life.

I wonder if the siblings stayed together,

across this ever-shortening thread, never striving

for nirvana because to achieve it would mean

a kind of forsaking. And they learned—

learned too young that fathers aren’t

to be trusted. In each life, the same

karmic cycle. Silk reeds become waves

become veranda floors. Then: the learned

leaving. My brother and I are always

looking for the ones left behind,

even as we’re leaving. Don’t worry.

The Buddha is not the forgiving kind.

We don’t care to be forgiven.