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Poetry
by Phoebe Wang
The Chinese Garden
Montreal Botanical Garden
Surfacing from the Métro, I consult
the map’s lit arches and broken mounts
the way a fortune-teller browses an open hand.
A passerby misreads my fate and asks, “Où est…?”
“Désolée– moi aussi je suis juste arrivée.”
Though I wasn’t always a stranger here.
These boulevards have seen the same brows,
dark as loam, the same profuse nature.
My mother tells me she’s brought me to this
garden before. She paid the price of admission
for both her children. Inside, everything
is clearly labeled—scotch pines tagged and shelved,
a flowering almond stuck with its formal name.
Tree peonies typecast ages ago by Marco Polo
as “roses the size of cabbages.” Guides lead
straggling groups through the onion-bulb door,
symbolizing prosperity. Or is it longevity?
She took me by the hand and showed me
what things mean. But not why lake stones
were prised up from unresisting beds and buried here,
or why the dwarf trees never outgrew their rooms.
The lanterns switch on, a cacophony of rosy light.
I forgive them for outlasting the wire
and glue, the valiant tissue-paper hares and spheres
handmade by my grandfather at the luckiest times
of the year and paraded for sale by his eldest
child when every other kid in the village would fly
their unnamed flowers with stamens of fire,
their makeshift replicas of the moon,
trading the old one for the new.
[Distillate © HA&L + Phoebe Wang | {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]
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