when he reached the age of twenty-nine
the shakya prince
with golden skin
and raven hair
threw wide the door
of his jeweled cage
and forever left behind
the entrapment of his birth

so began his deep involvement
with the people
for the first time the prince met
the daughters and the grandmothers
and the small muddy boys

he laughed with them
and cried with them
he touched their sores
and their corpses
and for the first time
the prince knew sorrow
and suffered embroilment in grief

he knew he could not go back
to the palace of ignorance
but nor could he bear
entanglement in this life
of anguish

so the prince sought teachers
to set him free a second time
not from unknowing bliss
but from knowledge of pain
and in each of their teachings
of self-abnegation
he found only further ensnarement

when he reached the age of thirty-five
the shakya prince
with golden skin
and raven hair
sat down beneath a tree
and vowed not to rise
until he had overcome
every trap
and snare
and tangle

and the prince sat
with singular focus
until he could see with utter clarity
the delicate mechanisms
of quantum entanglement
and his own perfect enmeshment
with every other being
in the universe

and the buddha rose
with a smile
and began to teach