Firework Sutra -- Draft 1

At the blue hour,
each spider leaves a cartwheeling widow
behind like a blurred negative. The ghost develops
slowly on the page, a swastika
in its decorative Buddhist form, the Heart’s Seal
stamped on the sky like Gautama Buddha’s chest
at death. It is Independence Day
and the West does not seek liberation
from a cartwheeling universe. The people here
paint mandalas out of fire, outlining the lake in red
to celebrate the return of July 4th. Their microcosm
is held together by a red, red rim
like a Dharma wheel, with lakeside houses
clinging to each spoke. I sit on the end of the dock
that represents name and form, splashing the black water
and listening to the musical show at the lakehouse
which is performed twice a week. It has been theorized
that time is not linear
but cyclical, and eternal recurrence
a mathematical certainty. Like a sand-mandala,
each celebration
is destroyed upon completion, but its design
will be reused again and again, across
an oscillating universe.