Buddhism

So. I wrote a sestina. It was hard.

The end.

Enjoy!

"December Buddha"

December cracks open like hazelnuts,
crinkled brown and brittle, dry from the fire,
cold-crisp and crunching as needles of pines.
As usual, wisdom comes just in time,
reminder to hold on to my forest,
to my stories, to make myself buddha.

I am lacking, no quiet rain-buddha,
born, as I was, a tight-curled hazelnut,
but I do send roots into my forest,
and in summer spread Colorado fire.
I find that more and more I pass the time
among the kings that are my totem pines.

In North Carolina, December pines
not for sun but for a softer buddha,
a figure to remind the month that time
ends not with January; hazelnut,
it curls in on itself, warm with the fire.
It is my roots, winding through the forest.

Some days I wait for rain in my forest.
I love how it trickles down my crown-pines
to soften days and keep away brush-fire.
In the spring I am not a flame-buddha,
want only streams for floating hazelnuts:
all my riddle answers are, "time, time, time."

The mackintosh flesh marks the passing time:
it still remembers which of the forests
was its home, that the roasted hazelnuts
were its brothers, and softening, it pines
for who I was in Virginia, a buddha
of spring, among the hay bales, soothing fire.

Then, I was water to cool the fire,
too small a paragon of space-time,
not seeing myself: quiet wind-buddha.
Now, December returns me—my forest,
in a whispered winter of silver pines
that will birth me again—a hazelnut.

I embrace my fire, my sprouting forest,
the water that with time stretches the pines;
settle as my buddha, my hazelnut.