They had their hack for suffering, the old
yogis. Even a two-inch levitation
changes the lay of shadows. Better than
the Bo tree’s shade is in the Bo tree’s branches,
your monkey-mind undressing a banana
while Dobermans bark up at you in vain.
Detachment gets you high, above all pain.
You’re parasailing miles above a lake
of fire, sawing sobbing through the cable
until you gust free in a falling flying
quest for a further shore. Detachment puts you
in low earth orbit, lens against the porthole
to photograph your suffering down there—
that Ganges with the lights along it, holy
cities feeding off it like electric
mosquitos plugged in the mother aorta.
The illness, the love, the illumination
volt back into the flow. You see them brighten
all your suffering from source to delta
until its faultline-fateline blazes white
to match the zigzag of the clear sky’s lightning
that struck you years ago, first grief, first gift.
Keep going, higher. Gravity and you
uncouple. Atoms start to break their bonds,
like oxygen’s with hydrogen: Those tears
you’re crying aren’t water anymore.
The synapse where your pain was crossing widens.
Your neurotransmitters are spilling free
and sprinkling space, which doesn’t feel a thing.
Neither do you, because you have dissolved,
at one with everything at last. Nirvana.