Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō

On a gray November morning, we gather—
Nipponzan Myohoji nuns and monks in saffron robes,
Veterans for Peace in black and white, and the rest of us—
to walk single file for twelve miles bearing banners for peace.

With a pewter-colored Maine sea to our left, we journey
past shuttered Grange halls, past summer homes with yards
ringed by gold-capped fence posts, past bungalows wrapped
in peeling clapboards, past Home-and-Garden greenscapes.

Brown oak leaves spiral seaward as we connect
with each other, the passersby, the road,
the hands raised in windows and doorways,
the mothers whose gleeful children see only a parade.

An ancient sky blends everything into a single expanse
of shuffling feet, fluttering flags, chanting voices,
rustling grass, honking horns and, above it all,
a white dove rising on a wind-whipped banner.

Over asphalt, cracked and smooth, we continue past tawny fields
speckled with cattails and guardrails draped with withering rose hips.
Baptist church bells toll a welcome as our feet mark the cadence
of the Japanese drums. Over and over, we repeat our mantra:

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo…

In this, we bring the essence of the universe to a single question:
If, in the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was God,
what is this word? How does it explain strafing gunfire, roadside bombs?
Pakistani boys scrambling for ice at Chota Lahore relief camp?
Kabul’s street kids hawking chewing gum for twenty cents a pack?
Children throwing grenades and donning suicide vests in Kirkuk?
Corpses of the unknown lying in wait in a Baghdad morgue—
No. 5060, with a bullet to the right temple,
No. 5061, with a bruised and bloated face,
No. 5062, with a tattoo that reads, “Mother, where is happiness?”
No. 5071, with eyes open, as if remembering what had happened?

Like the lotus, I seek to bear, simultaneously, seed and flower,
to feel the heartbeat of the poor, the exploited, the desperate and dying,
to walk and send my lonely voice aloft into this struggling world.
Nam Myoho Renge Kyo…