Dong,

dong,

the monks

ring their evening bell,

they gather around the great

bronze

statue of

the Buddha,

one bow,

another bow,

while they say their prayers.

Buddha looks down at the bowing monks

and says

you have been kind,

I will reward you,

you will be

treated fairly

and remembered,

and then

he winked

and stood frozen

for the rest of eternity.

Jackson Wilde of Troy, now a senior at Mount View High School, wrote this poem when he was 10 years old and living next to a Buddhist monastery in Xiamen, China.