Finding Zen in Cow Town

 

In Kansas City’s Union Station,

monks gathered to shake

colored sand that would become not sand,

but Mandala.

 

And here – pay attention now –

here is where it gets interesting:

a boy, three, maybe four,

saunters under the cordons

to do a little soft shoe

while monks ate, one assumes,

a simple meal.

 

Intricate designs and sharp, colored lines –

some no wider than a single small grain –

became the dust and scuffle of a child’s abandon.

 

When asked, on the news that night,

what he thought of the security footage

of the child’s sand dancing, of the mother’s

quick grab and fast retreat, a monk replied, smiling,

We swept it up and started over.

We will just have to work faster now.

 

In a few days, in an unveiling ceremony,

attendees marveled

ooh and ahh.

 

After all of the cameras packed away,

monks swept the second attempt

into a sacred vessel and poured it

into the waters of the Missouri

for good fortune.

 

The mandala, you see, is like this poem

we find ourselves in this very moment;

the letters of each word, a grain of colored sand.

Dance in it, kick it around under

the soles of your feet.

Sweep it up.

Pour it in the river.

 

Let it all wash out to sea.

 

 

 

-Shawn Pavey