There are buddhas in everything.
                                                      A squirrel 
strips the armor from a pinecone, 
discards it plate by plate as two retrievers 
play among the trees.
                                    There are buddhas 
in speaking.
                     You say I don’t keep others 
in my heart, but I can’t seem to keep them 
from slipping away.
                                There are buddhas 
in feeling.
                 A pool of sweat gathers 
on my chest as my aching back recounts 
all those moments spent lounging
in the massage chair.
                                   There are buddhas 
in sitting and forgetting.
                                      We were younger 
when we almost were, when your daughter 
was a distant dream, far from being 
conceived—she is still inconceivable 
to me.
            There must also be buddhas 
in preconceiving.
                            My bias is my feeling 
obliged to both cross and not cross 
the street at the same time—guilt follows 
me wherever I walk.
                                 Are there buddhas 
in believing?
                     Some mothers ostracize 
their “hell-bound” children, whereas others 
continue to eat, despite the suffering
it causes, because food taste good,
like memories set on a palate developed 
in loneliness.
                      What buddhas are there 
in recalling? The vacant kind, perhaps— 
negating, reclining, declining 
to speak.
                I’ve recently been struggling
to understand the impact of descendance. 

If there are buddhas in everything,
then, by necessity, there are buddhas
in the hatchlings making their way to sea, 
in the terrible truth that most will die 
before reaching the water.
                                           Notice how 
the shuttlecock greets the racket 
when you stop asking why—there are buddhas 
in this too.
                  If I were to die
in my sleep, what would it matter 
to me?
            If there are buddhas in everything, 
there are buddhas in the likelihood
of there being no buddhas in anything.