Returning Again

Holly Gayley

cartwheels,

            skipping rope,

                         tumbled by waves

these are the circles of my youth

I used to think of myself

as traveling the world

but I always returned to the same places—

Himalaya, Pyrenees, Rocky Mountains

a korra between mountain ranges

            seeking high ground

                         and open sky

tonglen helped me understand

            that you were afraid

caring for my mother was another kind of circle

            now you’re the head of the family, she said

my heart pulsing

            blood through veins,

                         how is it that yours stopped

                                       so suddenly

I reach my hands to the sky

            don’t wait for me

Holly Gayley, Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, is a scholar and translator of contemporary Buddhist literature in Tibet and Himalaya. Her research areas include gender and sexuality in Buddhist tantra, literature by and about Tibetan and Himalayan women, ethical reform in contemporary Tibet, and theorizing translation, both literary and cultural, in the transmission of Buddhist teachings to North America. Gayley is author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet (2016), translator of Inseparable Across Lifetimes: The Lives and Love Letters of the Buddhist Visionaries Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tāre Lhamo (2019), and editor of Voices from Larung Gar: Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century (2021).