I watch as monks destroy
the sandpainting—
reds, greens, blues, and golds,
painstakingly placed—
a world swept up in fragments,
swirling down river.
Shivers of sand scatter to eddies,
to piers, to gullies, and gorges,
riding waves of ocean,
stopping on shore,
here in my son’s sandcastle,
or in the stomach of a whale.
Sand coming to rest
at the bottom of the sea.
Each grain remains,
yet the mandala is gone,
like the maple outside my window
whose autumn leaves discard
to dirt. Unstoppable,
like the growth of a child,
or the coming of winter,
or you, who left too soon.
