WEBVTT

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The next poem I have to tell you
from topographical information

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about Buffalo.

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Its at the Western edge,
for those who don't know,

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of New York State, on Lake Erie
at the mouth of the Niagara

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River, which is just a channel
that carries the water of Lake

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Erie into Lake Ontario.

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And across the river from
Buffalo is Fort Erie in Canada.

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This is a kind of advice poem on
how to do a poem, in this case,

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how to resist time by
trying to focus all one's

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energies on the moment.

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It's called "Sarit Narai",
and that, you'll see,

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is a name of someone.

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"Now that the light
holds on after supper,

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why not walk west to
the end of Ferry Street

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and linger where the ferries
used to dock before the bridge

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spanned the Niagara?

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Why not enlarge the thin verge
of the moment with the Sunday

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crowd on deck 50 years
ago, riding to Fort Erie

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and back just for the fun of it.

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The wind from the lake
ruffles their hair,

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as the low sun glances
along the water,

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just as they left their
rooms to join the flow so you

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can go back to them for a
moment and lead them forward

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into the present, where
the gulls are gliding,

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swinging beneath the bridge in
figures that blur as you watch,

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and disappear.

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And why not call up
the boys you used

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to see here playing on the
boulders in the bridge's shadow

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before the fence was
put up to stop them.

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If one of them lost his
footing, his chances were slim,

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the push in the channel too hard
and heavy, the water of Erie

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beginning its
headlong, brainless

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rush to join the Ontario, as
if an extra minute mattered.

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Remember the evening
you found a crowd here,

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waiting beside an ambulance
with its motor running

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and a squad car, where a woman
sat in back, head in her hands,

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dark-haired?

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Next morning, leafing
through the local news,

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you found the story,
Woman from Thailand,

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three years in the States, loses
her son, 11, to the Niagara.

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Let yourself go if you
want to enlarge the moment

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and imagine what
might have happened

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if the boy, Sarit
Narai, had been

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fished from the river in time.

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Try to think of him as your
son's best friend in Niagara

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school, where friends were
scarce, quieting a wildness

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you could never manage,
the mild manners of Asia

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persuasive by mere example.

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And what if your daughter
admires him even more

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and comes to choose him for
her life's companion, not

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the drab complainer
she ended up with?

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The word turned left that
day on the forking path.

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But the path on the right
still runs beside it,

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though never touching.

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A bountiful Buddha smile as he
explains to your granddaughters

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and grandsons how to climb
the eightfold path to freedom.

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As gulls like these swoop
over the gray stones

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and the ferries steam back
and forth if you let them.

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Freely the crowd on deck
empties its mind of thought

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and welcomes sensation,
the sun and wind.

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And then the riders waken to see
the skyline of home, beckoning

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from a distance as
if it missed them.

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So they're ready to take
up their lives again.

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As a ship pulls in,
where now, a line of cars

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waits in the twilight
to pay the bridge toll,

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not 30 yards from the spot
where the ambulance waited

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and the woman cried in
the back seat of the car.

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After an hour, the crowd moved
off, dissolving to families,

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to couples musing on
twilight pastimes.

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For a moment,
though, each may have

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hesitated to change the subject
and appear small-souled.

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The midst of sorrow already
thinning and fading,

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that would have remained if they
lived in Eden, the one kingdom,

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where the sorrows of
others feel like our own.

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When Buddha neared
Nirvana, one story

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goes, he looked back
on us as we drowned

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in the sea of endless craving,
and was filled with pity,

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and chose to postpone his
bliss till all were saved.

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But how can a climb
from the world

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be managed here when
the crowd on the ferry

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wants the sunset to linger, and
the mother would sell her soul

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to get her son back,
and the boy still

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struggles to grab the slippery
rock and pull himself up.

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His friends all helping, so
he can grow old among them,

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an old man looking back
on his deeds of kindness.

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Now, the few who
met him and the many

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who never did, but might
have, feel the phantom gap

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he would have filled, but
are ignorant of its cause

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and blame their wives, their
husbands, their children,

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their towns and
jobs, and hunt around

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for new gospels,
new philosophies.

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If you see them this evening
pacing along the bank, where

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once the ferries docked and the
Sunday riders lost themselves

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awhile in the sway and shimmer,
pity their restlessness.

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There must be a way to
step forward and name

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the one they miss, Sarit
Narai, in a tone so resonant,

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it holds them a moment,
beyond loss and longing."

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