Annie Bien

Paper Leaves - Derge Monastery, Tibet

Snowball red buds bloom in bundled clumps
across the meadow, the women pull flowering

weeds, accustomed to uprooting. Strong hands vie
against strong-willed coils - ripping earth, the way

men with guns uprooted men in robes, and maroon
cloth disappeared in snow across mountain passes

or sank in marooned stains on glacial white. The women
smile, stripping roots into fiber, pounding pulp

into remains. Heated in butter churns, a tea mixture
pours onto muslin, dries in sheets. The monks

peel the paper to print a page on a long wood
tablet etched with words. Rollers creak over leaves

accompanied by the whispers of page counters.
Here lie stacks of written voices, ready to sound

in the minds of readers. A boy looks at a rock
carved with a mantra for mind protection -

through successive snows from melting glaciers,
the flowers still bloom, the scriptures stack

up in piles at the printing press, waiting,
waiting to divulge what's always been known.