Om Mani Padme Hum

Up where the air
is thin as my life 
continents away
in Kentucky

the mountaintops’ broken
knife blades cut 
the chrome blue heavens
and the belly of the sky bleeds

snow and fog.
The sun burns
the tops of my ears
to scabs before I cover them
with a bandana. 

Back in Kathmandu chattering macaques 
climbed temples and emaciated cows
tottered in the streets. And the flowers! 
Beneath a sky grey with smoke
rising from the riverside where the dead 
are burned a stranger dipped a finger
in one of his bowls of bright powder
and pressed a vermillion dot on the middle 
of my forehead maybe it meant nothing
just a gimmick but I still feel it.

In Pangboche at 13,000 feet
an Angry Buddha glares
flapping prayer flags whip 
my mind while ravens 
perch on mani stones cawing 
“Hail to the Jewel of the Lotus.”
When I limp past them
faint from altitude 
finally my body fills 
with the quietude that comes 
when you are neither here
nor there.

Misha Zakmann chased ambitions to Nashville, Louisville, and finally New Albany, Indiana. From Melitopol in the Pale of Settlement, thence to Paris and Brooklyn trekked Zakmann’s progenitors. Raised in Queens, New York. Now retired from teaching writing, he homesteads with his family, performs music, and continues to write songs, poetry and fiction.