Letter from Guanyin to Superman

Kal-El,

According to you
what rattles your steel creed
is a level look
from eyes you name enemy;
hold that gaze
and you’ll never again
kiss rain-slick lips,
a moon at the collarbone.

Yet mind is clear light,
prabhāsvara, moon in a well—
“enemy” only the mirror.

Later: a dusty corridor.
You’ll pace the monastery of hours,
where metal dissolves.
Even you can’t bend
the second hand.

I listen for the inner lamp,
bodhicitta humming in your ribs:
void, or luminous emptiness?

Tell me where you stand
in the koan
of parents.

Fathers are vacant,
strength shaped as absence;
mothers, to them, are only women—
women.

I say a mother can guide Buddha
through salt to fresh,
keeping the lamp lit
under waves.

—G.