Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo: Unwrapping Mt. Hiei
Yusai Sakkai breaks paths, his feet
break high grass and bushes. He’s been running
the mountain since two in the morning again,
blood pumping blue under skin
wrapped in white pilgrim robes.
He runs to strip illusion off.
Sakkai stands under a waterfall, chanting.
Sakkai’s body is a mountain in storm.
God has a forest body, thick as firs.
After five years, Sakkai lives his funeral:
Nine days locked away with God in the dark.
He is sleepless and fasts without drinking.
These nine nights, in procession, Sakkai shuffles
slowly, then more slowly, to the temple well.
He dips up the offering. He wrinkles
in the ladle, the buckets, the puddles.
It is a liquid place, sleeplessness.
His gauntness grows, fills out God.
ELIZABETH HARLAN-FERLO’s work has appeared online and in print in Poet Lore, Valparaiso Review, Bellingham Review, So to Speak, Anglican Theological Review, and Burnside Review, among others. Her essay “Gathering Anyway” was a finalist for Oregon Quarterly’s Northwest Perspectives contest in 2009. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon, where she taught in the Walter and Nancy Kidd Tutorial Program. She currently teaches at Oregon Episcopal School. Read more at www.elizabethharlanferlo.com. (Photography by Meghan French)
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