Dane Cervine: The Jeweled Net of Indra

Driving down the freeway, remembering Hindu mythology—
Indra’s net, each intersecting weave holding a jewel
reflecting every other facet of every other jewel, infinitely.
Suddenly, I see the hands that paint the white lines,
that lay the black asphalt, hands of a man joyous or lost
soap-scrubbing his body clean for dinner and beer,
for the wife who loves him, hands that hold their tickets
for London to see the grandmother, the hard-drinking
pub matron whose body bore children in building rubble
when the Nazi bombing relented—and if not for that war,
would I be driving now, hands on the wheel, listening
to the radio recount the birth of the child named Tsunami
after the storm that drove her mother into the hills,
would the meager dollars I send to rebuild a village—
minted with the Rosicrucian-eye above the pyramid
dreamed by this country’s founders as the all-seeing
vision of a world where not a sparrow falls
that we don’t know about—would I have known
to send it, if not for the hands that flew the kite
that drew electricity from the skies that made its way
into the flat-screened box that unveils this jewel-linked world
twenty-four hours of every gleaming day, weaving news
with advertisements for clothes made by hands in China
nimbly sewing a dream of Hollywood and Ipod and offering
their bodies one by one for a better future—
while the coal that fumes the electricity that plunges
the needle drifts in air that circles a globe that warms
the icecaps that melt into sea that shifts the current
that loves the wind that swirls from heaven to earth
stirring one storm after another, blowing
its diaphanous passion over New Orleans like a trumpet
sinking the heart so low with blue notes that flood
is a dark cure for what burns—this illusion
that anyone stands alone—stranded
on the roofs of our swollen houses mouthing
save me to a world whose millions of hands
can turn up the volume loud enough to finally hear,
or flick with a single click the entire interconnected
vision of it all off.

Ed. Note: Indra’s net (also called Indra’s jewels or Indra’s pearls) is a metaphor used to illustrate the concepts of emptiness, dependent origination, and interpenetration in Buddhist philosophy. The metaphor’s earliest known reference is found in the Atharva Veda. It was further developed by the Mahayana school in the 3rd century Buddhāvatamsaka Sūtra and later by the Huayan school between the 6th and 8th centuries. [source: Wiki]

Poem copyright 2005 Dane Cervine. Winner of the 2005 National Writers Union (Local 7) Contest chosen by ADRIENNE RICH; subsequently published in Poetry Flash, The SUN Magazine, and in the book The Jeweled Net of Indra (Plain View Press).