THE SLEEPING BUDDHA

Out there on the Lake, directly west across from us at the edge of evening lies Okijima, the Lake's largest island. Okijima is known locally as The Sleeping Buddha for its very close resemblance to the stretched out form of the Sleeping Buddha when viewed, for example, from our deck. There's Buddha's head to the right, then the neck, shoulder, waist, elbow, hip-- then the gown, tapering off into the lakebed.

There's a small village on the island, that bands the Buddha's neck and turns into a diamond necklace at night; there's another bright light just about where Buddha's third eye would be: a dock light that stays on well into the night in summer, to direct those still on the water in the dark when most of the necklace has gone out. People go to sleep early on the Sleeping Buddha. There's another notable light at Buddha's navel that is sometimes on all night. I like to think it's a temple, and not some forgetful person's garage light.

On clear Summer and Autumn evenings I sit and watch the sapphire phases of the Lake as the setting sun's light slides out across the water on the edge of the mountain shadow reaching toward the always sleeping figure, when the island seems to glow all the more as the darkness darkens around it until for the last few moments of the day, as the only bright object on the darkling horizon the island takes on a deep emerald light of its own; backed by the pearl gray vistas of the further and further mountains it glows with such eminence, almost from within, it's no wonder that so many centuries of lakeside eyes have seen there the radiant Buddha, deep in dreams of what we know as time.