'Boddhisattva (the Razor's Edge)'

While lying on the ocean
Chasing heaving mountains
I saw a roiling blackened log
Bobbing unconstrained
Shipwrecked and utterly surrendered.
I don't know how to become that limp.

The other ocean I dip my rusted eyes into
Is the cavernous museum.
The water there is heavier, more viscous.
It forms tearful, slow eddies
Around the flotsam of a hundred decades.
It laps at the last craggy peaks of a mountain
Sinking back into imagination.

I come here to visit another piece of wood
Fashioned into a seated Boddhisattva.
Caged in a plexiglass palace
He is utterly undisturbed by the river of
Shuffling somnambulists.
And even as less hurried visitors hunt for signs of
The silent sutra
He blushes and hides his smile.
As the tired stream drifts by
His posture never slackens
His hand never closes.
I don't know how to become that hard.