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Vestigia
by Dan Bosworth
The slow, deliberate disembarking
of an elderly man
from his dusty Vespa,
to allow his aged wife
gingerly, to take the saddle,
Chivalry seeming no Western import,
as I am.
And fifty cubic centimetres,
sputtering blue smoke
propels two stoic countenances,
sun-darkened and beautiful,
toward the mountain
slowly revealing itself in the morning haze.
Past another ancient woman
stooping to gather wild greens
in the shadow of a twenty storey monolith,
plantain, burdock, and winter cress,
whose wrinkled bronze skin, too,
brands her prior to the convention
that lures a younger woman,
chalky white-faced and sun-shaded,
as one of Baudelaire's apparitions
of a Parisian dawn,
onto a mountain path,
in two inch heels.
Balanced in her gloved hands,
marked for some hillside tumulus
upon which to sweetly wither,
pink-petaled roses
of a lighter hue,
than the uniformed band
of approaching ajumma
clad in fuscia tracksuits,
who, arms waving, drive
the cult of the individual,
fleeing to the mountaintops.
I imagine all the Byronic heroes
and brooding Werthers
sipping tea
with Han Shan in his mountain hut,
ten-foot squared,
contemplating the stream rolling swiftly by,
boiling over mossy stones
and clawing pine roots.
At less lofty elevations
I cross the stream, now only a trickle,
and find a mouldy sock -
even Taoist hermits need socks
from time to time
when the nights grow cool.
Magpie chatters in the branches,
the blue iridescence in its wings,
like oil on water,
recalls a passage in Hesse's Demian
that I can't remember.
Dirt path ends in gardens
of green onions and cinder blocks -
The city rises again.
Pass by a parked school bus,
painted with cartoon animals.
The driver, in blue silk vest
and wing-tips
does push-ups beside it.
bare-knuckled fists on the asphalt,
plank-backed body tense like a steel cable,
ready to man the ramparts
against the next wave of foreign invaders
over the East Sea.
A little further,
two-storey (story?) building, pale green
like disco-era refrigerators,
temple roof tiles
urban decay fusion
of grimy walls and
filigreed iron railings.
Balcony ledge lined
with miniature trees,
twisting pines and junipers,
and one cherry, blossoming white,
some in delicate pots of green celadon,
others, plastic pails flecked with paint.
Branches fork,
split the dichotomy, false perhaps
of Asia, new and ancient.
One draws old men into the mountains
with hand radios, charming squirrels
with electronica.
The other entrances a younger man
down twisting alleyways
chasing vestiges of an ideal,
Signs in a script I barely understand.
- D.B
October 22 , 2005
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