Giant panda

Christian Century, August 28, 2002 by Robert Siegel

Giant panda

for Ihab and Sally Hassan

   In the white mist of morning I find my place,
   a square of the sun where I can balance

   and chew the shoots, their green light in my mouth.
   I sit, my footpads shiny, taking in the dim

   sweet music of existence. On the mountain
   when the enlightened one came holding the flower,

   Kashya smiled. So it has ever been
   as I move, myopic, from blossom to blossom.

   I am the bear who sees your original face
   a hundred years before you were born.

   I sit, the world circling about me,
   holding the secret between tongue and palate,

   the sweetness of nothing, above which
   the mind shimmers like a forest of silks.