On this morning
bleak midwinter of '44
in Heart Mountain, Wyoming,
heartland of America,
Nyogen Senzaki Sensei
performed to his makeshift
congregation of interned Japanese
and Japanese-Americans
the duties of a priest.
He chanted sonorously
mindful of the dark outside
the mirror-like windows
of the barracks. "Wonder
of all Wonders. All beings
are Buddha, endowed
from the start with wisdom
and virtue."
What can be added, what
taken away, we will never leave
this place, it lives in us
like a mother's embrace.
They thought with one mind
quietly and not without sadness.
When it was all over
they had tea
and went there separate ways.
On this morning.