Susan Terris
Buddha Is Floating On The OceanA trick of light and the white Buddha
from the redwood deck
shines through the window, weightless marble
poised on an incoming wave.
Beyond him, pelicans, a scribble of fog
across Pinos Point, and a mottled slice of
daytime moon.This is a place of place. As Buddha sits
on a breaker, legs angled in a lotus,
so do I. As his hands rest,
the right on his knee, the left palm up,
so will mine. Our bodies have unlearned
laws of gravity and mastered levitation.
Our heads “fixed, top-knotted”
are only half-owned by their bodies.
Our faces,
distant now, cannot be fathomed.Here as the moon draws us between its horns,
washes us with changing tides,
everything is old yet new.
Nothing hurts. Memory is sea foam
and flotsam. We love all yet none.
We do not blink, have no tears.
Our images stencil patterns over water,
glass, wave, and sky.
Tomorrow the sun and moon will appear again
with us or without.
Bio:
Susan Terris' book Fire Is Favorable To The Dreamer was published by Arctos Press in 2003. It has just been named “Best Poetry Book of 2003” by the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association. In 2004, Gary Metras at Adastra Press will publish a letterpress edition of her chapbook Poetic License, and Marsh Hawk Press will publish her third full-length book Natural Defenses. Other recent books of poetry are: Curved Space (La Jolla Poets Press, 1998), Eye of the Holocaust (Arctos Press, 1999) and Angels of Bataan (Pudding House Publications, 1999). Recent fiction: Nell's Quilt (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Her journal publications include The Antioch Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Ploughshares, Calyx, Shenandoah, Hunger Mountain, Hotel Amerika, Missouri Review, and Southern California Anthology. With CB Follett, she is co-editor of an annual anthology, RUNES, A Review Of Poetry. In the last four years she has had 16 different poems nominated for Pushcart Awards. She is the 2003 winner of the George Bogin Award offered by the Poetry Society of America.
