Banteay Srei

by Terry Ann Carter



Of all the temples in Angkor

and there must be at least forty—


Banteay Srei is my favourite:

I imagine the fingers of women


holding the implements to carve

pink sandstone, quartz arenite into


small delicate roses trailing lintels.

Foliage. Female dancers, perfect


in proportions. Their loosely draped skirts

and heavy earrings almost moving


in an intimate gesture toward friendship.

This is a thing you need to touch


as though tapping these secrecies would

breathe life into cold stone.


A  blessed mood erases the wasted

fields, the blood-soaked earth of earlier


roads. I am reminded of the Buddhist proverb:

the fallen flower never returns to the branch


the broken mirror never again reflects.

I close my eyes to recall a favourite haiku—


the falling flower

I saw drift back to the branch

was a butterfly


the chakra of my spine, split open.



From Day Moon Rising, Windsor, Ontario: Black Moss Press, 2012.