To the Thief Who Stole the Laughing Buddha Statue from Our Front Flower Bed
If you keep him, bad karma will fester
like the executioner’s blister.
If you gift him, stink will cling to you,
like manure on a shoe.
My wife is very non-attached
to his grinning contentment.
His joy is not cast
in a chunk of swiped cement.
Look again, Buddha-snatcher:
he’s still in our garden,
already belly-laughing
under the rhododendron.
You may as well return the not-him
unmoved by your Keystone caper,
for no matter what you do
the joke’s on you.