Bodhisattva the Snow Dancer

 

In the hush of the arena in Vancouver Winter Olympics

Yuna slides across the ice like a snow-heron about to fly.

As she glides in Chopin, morning dawn breaks

in her timid eyes over the turning shoulders.

Worlds away in Kyung-Ju Buddhist temple sits

a lone Bodhisattva etched in stone, cradling

her forbidden desire to be born a snow-dancer.

It is snowing in the silent garden of the temple.

As if in apparition, before the forlorn gaze

of Bodhisattva manifests an exquisite form

of a young woman dancing in the flurry of motion,

mirroring the dream she has dreamt

for a thousand years today—

A teardrop rolls down her chiseled cheek.

In the arena, wrapped in Piano Concerto, Yuna

floats and floats in midair before landing like

a snowflake into a lotus corolla.

A million petals shower down in ovation,

coronation.

Bodhisattva, bathed in karmic ecstasy on

lotus pedestal, slowly folds her crescent eyes

smiling like rippling silk—

 

Yuna: Figure skating gold medalist in Vancouver Winter Olympics

Bodhisattva:A compassionate deity in Buddhism who refrains

from entering nirvana to save others.

 

(From “A Thousand Magnolias”)

 

© Therese Young Kim