Southern Legitimacy Statement
My first two wives (it didn’t work out; it didn’t work out) were from Southern California, where I grew up, but the third (the charm) is from Louisiana. Her Cajun father – who spoke no English until forced to in school – was from outside of Mamou. After leaving the West Coast, I lived in Louisiana for more than two (separate) decades, first when I taught at LSU in Baton Rouge (1982-1992), then at Xavier University in New Orleans (1997-2007), then again when I became abbot of the New Orleans Zen Temple (2016-present). I am now placed, like an anecdotal jar, on a mountainside in Sewanee, Tennessee, which seems pretty far north to me, and while the “slovenly wilderness” surrounds me, I can see Alabama from my front porch when the trees are nekked in their winter undress.
Cement Buddha
Outside Point Barre in St. Landry Parish
in a weathered notch of the Bible Belt,
the roadside cement statuary beckons
like a graveyard of petrified angels and animals.
Rampant bear, delicate deer, and astonished dolphin
surround a pair of St. Francis twins, while an array
of stiff Marys in white and skyblue latex paint stand
like pawns instead of the Queen of Heaven. Saints here
sell, though they seem fewer as we head north and
enter the twi-faith zone between the swamp and prairie
Catholics and the born-again hill-pine evangelicals.
With one eye always peeled for Buddhas,
oddly enough I find one here. Fat, not laughing
but with a patient grin, ears drooping to his
waist like Granny’s dewlaps. The car is packed
full of books, mid-move, so I plant him on the floorboard
between my legs, his cueball head a third knee,
where he can’t see the road ahead – or me.
The old woman who collects the cash insists
that the Hindu clan who run the motel next door
down Hwy 55 are like family when she takes me aside
and, crossing herself, sells him to me.
The Past Is Not Past
– After Huang Tingjian
Here on the mountain in all directions
Graveyards abound. Grief echoes and fog glows,
The ghosts of Confederate orphans.
Tears are shed and dons don spurts of religion.
As the sun sets, foxes return to their dens
And young couples couple on tombstones.
While you have it, drink deeply of your wine.
History is a memory unworthy of honest men.
