Full Circle

Anne Valley-Fox, Mexico

(i)

As for the smoldering caldron we call the world,

Japanese monks hold it in their hands.

Abbot Ota carried a box from Nagasaki

consecrated to cradle atomic ashes

and Buddhist monks in black robes

walked from San Francisco to Trinity Site:

they ferried a flame in a red lantern

kindled from Hiroshima’s burning embers.

(ii)

Late in the day a cloudburst shines the air.

Twelve monks face the monolith, sixty years

stationed at Ground Zero; they kneel

on little satin boats afloat on the desert floor

and offer silent prayers. To the west, a luminous storm

swirls above the San Mateo Mountains

and on our faces a breeze so clement

we who are watching  barely need to breathe.

(iii)

Abbot Ota holds a chain of paper cranes

folded with the prayers of Southwestern children:

Please, please, never again a nuclear bomb

dropped on creatures anywhere in the world!

He bundles the cranes in the prayer cloth.

Three monks wrap it with string;

tenderly, they feed it to the atomic flame

set on the ground to burn.

(iv)

Under extravagant sky, nothing moves

but breath, blaze, the sandy lights of grama grass

and white blossoming yucca: the ravenous flame

consumes itself to ashes.

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The Full Circle Ceremony was an international action initiated by Buddhist monks
to extinguish the burning embers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at Trinity Site, New Mexico, on August 9, 2005.