Angkor Wat

Sept 21 2018

The beauty of the old barn

was not its wide weathered planks

cut from the tall trees

that are now mostly gone.

Not the dusty light

shafting through the cracks

in its vast dim interior,

nor the iron implements

with their glorious patina of rust

scattered on its soft dirt floor.

No, it was the muscular trees

grunting-up through the roof,

persistent shrubs

like a garland of green

constricting its walls.

The waist-high grass, going to seed

and lapping at its foundations.

The old building, so graceful in decline

as it slumped back to earth

with a kind of louche beauty,

returning to the soil

subsumed in the land.

Like a lost Mayan city

swamped by feverish jungle.

Or Angkor Wat,

its stagnant moats

with their murky algal bloom,

mossy stone, verdant green on grey.

Its stately courtyards

over-run

by great tropical hardwoods.

How much more beautiful

is the work of man

as nature reclaims it,

so pathetic in its transience

and awesome in its grace.

Like a sun-dried ancient, at peace with his fate,

whose paper-thin skin

is almost translucent

and whose brittle bones have shrunk,

peering out

through rheumy eyes

with world-weary wisdom.

Such an odd origin story to this poem.

In the latest Atlantic (October 2018), in the recurring feature called The Big Question, they called out for nominations for The Eighth Wonder of the World. The submissions are both solicited by the editors and open to the reading public. This one was first in the list:

Vanessa Hua, author, A River of Stars

Angkor Wat is where my husband proposed to me at dawn, the sky rosy and golden over the spires reflected in the moat. With its stunning bas-reliefs and crumbling temples in eternal battle with banyan trees, the temple complex inspires awe and contemplation of the sweep of history and the atrocities of war.

My response to this description was immediate and evocative. It recalled a persistent theme of mine, man vs nature: that is, our presumption of control and conceit of posterity. For some reason I pictured an old falling-down barn and the encroachment of the natural landscape. This poem was the result, and pretty much wrote itself. As I said to one of my first readers, “pretty much ...passing through my hand as if I were taking dictation.”

I should note the more literal and less vernacular use of “awesome”: an over-used and debased word that I'm pleased to reclaim. I was also gratified to find a use for one of my favourite words, “louche”. I like its connotation of slightly disrespectful seediness and of letting oneself go. I discern a kind of sexual energy in its implication of looseness and surrender.

The First Day

Sept 18 2018

The first day

the buses return

from wherever it is they summer,

nesting

in neatly ordered rows

in some sprawling far-off lot.

They materialize in the fall

as if conjured out of air,

flocking in the schoolyard, then busily dispersing

like gawky yellow birds

migrating home.

The day you notice

the first leaf has turned,

when the air's cool crisp edge

has quickened your gait

and refreshed a listless world.

When the waves of heat have stilled

and the humidity has cleared,

and the blue, looking up

is so luminous and pure

it's as if colour could have substance

and a pleasure dome covers the earth.

The day the pumpkins appear

in enormous cardboard crates,

overflowing

by the supermarket doors.

A cornucopia

of bright orange gourds,

corrugated spheres, facing blankly out

like jostling eager neophytes

waiting to be formed.

And then, a few weeks hence

the slumping flesh

of orphans left

in the dumpster in the rear.

The succession of seasons,

and the comfort we take

in the order of things;

from grass to leaves to snow,

rites of passage, rituals

accustomed milestones.

The cycling of season-to-season

and then year after year repeating;

so much faster, it seems

as we get older, and slower, and jaded

and others take our place.

The porcelain skies

we lay on our backs and watched

exhilarated by our smallness,

the buses we rode, and pumpkins carved

'til we outgrew ourselves.

With a weary sigh

at the passage of time

and the bittersweet ache of loss.

The Lay of the Land

Sept 12 2018

Wind whips through the narrows

of this small inland lake

making headway impossible.

Its forested shores

of primordial rock

that were carved by glaciers eons ago

are steering the wind

like a great brass instrument,

funnelling air

through intricate passes

that curve, and branch, and narrow,

turning movement to sound

and invisible air

to implacable force.

You can read the lay of the land

in this onshore breeze

that blows reliably

off Lake Superior

in the afternoon heat.

Its cold black water

and the sun-warmed land

are a convection machine,

so even here, miles north

it pours through the gap

and holds me at bay.

The canoeist's mantra

“may the wind

be always at your back”

has failed me once again;

turning constantly into its teeth, it seems,

as if it knew

and was toying with me,

amused at my frustration.

A large bird is hovering

directly above me,

wings beating into the breeze

so exactly

all the forces cancel out.

It steers with the lightest of touch,

wind rippling

its sleekly feathered form.

Is it high enough to see

the great lake itself?

To discern the storms of fall

the darkness of winter

the southern refuge

it will soon seek out?

The lay of the land

like a topographical map

to its keen avian eye.

And the terrible forces of nature

I can feel converge

on this small inland lake

on this insignificant spot;

a whistling wind, pinched by the narrows,

white-tipped waves

churning north.

And an open canoe

barely holding its own.