Kuan Yin

By Susan Rodgers                                  

You sit upon a pedestal of jade

milk green, your light flows liquid from within

pulsing prayer through rivulets of stone.

And so, you are a contradiction, made

hard jade, yet soft like sacred love, Kuan Yin.

You guide me even now. Through you I own

my stiff resistance to God’s grace. Afraid

to melt, I keep my edges hard and in

my heart I keep your love, for me alone.

Your right eye holds a tear forever laid

in stone; it holds me too. I drink you in,

search for your source of peace, the deep calm known

and shared by you. Within the jade, Kuan Yin

it’s here. I remember now— compassion 

“The poem Kuan Yin is dedicated to Keishu Okada, the daughter of Kotama Okada. It is also dedicated to Amrtianandamayi. It was inspired by a jade figurine of Kuan Yin at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California.”