This is a really calming poem...

School's out for summer: turned in my grades yesterday afternoon. I've committed myself to finishing a draft of my next novel by the end of summer. Oh dear! Happy summer, everyone!

Surf Buddha

by Matthew Lippman

There is a sandalwood Buddha on the desk that has my stomach

and I don't suppose to call myself a Buddha

or even pretend to know much about Buddhist whirlings

but Rachel gave me the thing and it's got my belly

the one my father has got

and the one his father had

and I know this bulge the way I know my name,

and can't believe I've become the language of fat

that the boys in my family have kept quiet.

So I encourage my stomach out into the world,

rub it on a daily basis and thinkth

at if I ever become a religious man

there would be god and glory to find there,

my rib cage distended,

my love of ice cream as sweet as my love of Rachel

who put the Buddha in my palm a month after we met and said, have this,

and I said, I already have this,

my hands in motion around my belly button and then today

noticed for the first time that the little bastard has got some serious

nipples on him,

thank god, and breasts too,

he's the perfect kind of godlike statuette

even if I am a Jew

but the days have been glorious and people die in truck crashes

and men beat their wives and flowers bloom purple

and the cardinal I've named Jack always comes around my way at this time,

4:40 in Baldwin on the Island,

Wes Montgomery on the Sony

and I don't know if it's his song Cariba or the wind on my swollen toes

that makes me pick up the little guy, stick him in my mouth,

swirl him around between teeth and cheek,

place him on the edge of my tongue and let him surf there,

through the neighborhood of my white heat,

on the curl of my pink waves.

from The New Year of Yellow,

published by Sarabande Books