1 Poem by Gerard Sarnat

Blessings And Prostrations 

Vietnam’s people long at war with themselves,
authorities forced out a monk
who gave birth to community in France.

With a lion’s roar and deep mindful breath,
Plum Village brought to light
that Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh suffered
a brain hemorrhage but his coma’s
attended to in a Bordeaux hospital ICU.

The sangha awaits what their Zen Master
might bring back from refuge
on the other side of the river.

Receiving prayers and healing energy
in worldly exile, the Beloved Teacher
responded to the Buddha’s Wake Up :
Can’t find speech, Thay recovered his smile.

Bouyed up in the village’s hermitage,
wheelchair under bodhi tree, Thich pays
attention to birdsong, relishes peals of the bell.

 Bionote 

Gerard Sarnat MD received his education at Harvard where he was the editor of the freshman literary magazine The Yardling, and Stanford. He established and staffed clinics for the disenfranchised, has been a CEO of healthcare organizations, and was a Stanford professor. 

Gerry is published in over a hundred journals and magazines and is the author of three critically acclaimed collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man (2010), Disputes (2012), and 17s (2014) in which each poem, stanza or line has 17 syllables. 

For Huffington Post reviews, reading dates including Stanford, publications and more, visit GerardSarnat.com. His books are available at select bookstores and on Amazon,
and his work appears in literary magazines stocked by Barnes and Noble among other distributors. 

Gerard has been featured this year as Songs of Eretz Poetry Review’s Poet of the Week with one of his poems appearing daily. Dr. Sarnat is the second poet ever to be so honored. As well, he is a featured poet in Avocet, A Journal of Nature Poems, which is leading its weekly publication with Sarnat's poems for the summer.