Ana Pugatch
The Monks Took Pictures of the Fruit
“The craving of a person given to heedless living grows like a creeper. Like the monkey seeking fruits in the forest, he leaps from life to life (tasting the fruits of his kamma). —Dhammapada
When the flood washed away the dirt from the hills—when the one road became a river and the river ran brick-red—the monastery had to ration its food. The monks didn’t mind, but reining in the appetites of laowai is no easy task. (Feeding a sangha of hungry ghosts).
So with the rains came Tuesday’s lesson: after breakfast we filled our bowls with hot water, swished the scraps and drank them clean. No grain of rice unwasted.
We climbed the mist to the highest hill with stomachs still hollow like morning. We were told the body doesn’t need much sleep since the day’s zazen sustains you.
To celebrate the rain’s end, the workers sloshed up our river-road with wooden crates of fruit. Durian, dragon’s eye, rambutan. (Back then I didn’t know their English names). The cook arranged the bounty into prism-blossoms,
and we waited for the monks to eat first. But they did not fill their plates. The monks took pictures of the fruit—those brilliant colors like birds of paradise, transforming over centuries to be perfectly different.
They tucked their phones into their robes and each picked out one piece. We filed over more slowly than usual. To see the fruit with new eyes—preserve their beauty in our minds.
*The Dhammapada. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Restoration of the Temple of Dawn
Bangkok, Thailand
Taking your picture, I carve your features from porcelain, too--
the sky gray with the ashes of kings. You are listening to the voice
in your ear, about this replication of the Buddhist cosmology…its seashells
the ballast from Chinese ships see how they glitter each morning…
The Chao Phraya is not glass. Its opaque waves cut into our boat,
and as we approach we see new ladders leaning into clouds.
The temple is under renovation. Bamboo scaffolds the crumbling
prangs. Human hands have polished off the moss to make Wat Arun
as radiant as it once was. Four hundred years ago, shards of green
and pink were pressed into each side, and as the temple set
it cast a white sun over the river, its faces rippling like pearls.
But the five stupas have faded, their façade dulled by heavy rains.
“It won’t be what it once was,” I say. As you look out over
the water, you take the seashell from your ear and place it into mine:
Restoring the temple isn’t easy, and the climb through six heavens
is steep—but some are willing to take that risk as they vanish into sky.
“The craving of a person given to heedless living grows like a creeper. Like the monkey seeking fruits in the forest, he leaps from life to life (tasting the fruits of his kamma). —Dhammapada
When the flood washed away the dirt from the hills—when the one road became a river and the river ran brick-red—the monastery had to ration its food. The monks didn’t mind, but reining in the appetites of laowai is no easy task. (Feeding a sangha of hungry ghosts).
So with the rains came Tuesday’s lesson: after breakfast we filled our bowls with hot water, swished the scraps and drank them clean. No grain of rice unwasted.
We climbed the mist to the highest hill with stomachs still hollow like morning. We were told the body doesn’t need much sleep since the day’s zazen sustains you.
To celebrate the rain’s end, the workers sloshed up our river-road with wooden crates of fruit. Durian, dragon’s eye, rambutan. (Back then I didn’t know their English names). The cook arranged the bounty into prism-blossoms,
and we waited for the monks to eat first. But they did not fill their plates. The monks took pictures of the fruit—those brilliant colors like birds of paradise, transforming over centuries to be perfectly different.
They tucked their phones into their robes and each picked out one piece. We filed over more slowly than usual. To see the fruit with new eyes—preserve their beauty in our minds.
*The Dhammapada. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Restoration of the Temple of Dawn
Bangkok, Thailand
Taking your picture, I carve your features from porcelain, too--
the sky gray with the ashes of kings. You are listening to the voice
in your ear, about this replication of the Buddhist cosmology…its seashells
the ballast from Chinese ships see how they glitter each morning…
The Chao Phraya is not glass. Its opaque waves cut into our boat,
and as we approach we see new ladders leaning into clouds.
The temple is under renovation. Bamboo scaffolds the crumbling
prangs. Human hands have polished off the moss to make Wat Arun
as radiant as it once was. Four hundred years ago, shards of green
and pink were pressed into each side, and as the temple set
it cast a white sun over the river, its faces rippling like pearls.
But the five stupas have faded, their façade dulled by heavy rains.
“It won’t be what it once was,” I say. As you look out over
the water, you take the seashell from your ear and place it into mine:
Restoring the temple isn’t easy, and the climb through six heavens
is steep—but some are willing to take that risk as they vanish into sky.
Ana Pugatch is the 2020–21 Poetry Heritage Fellow at George Mason University in Virginia. She is a Harvard graduate who studied Buddhism with the Woodenfish Foundation while teaching English in China and Thailand. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Los Angeles Review, The Poetry & Meditation Anthology, Thin Air Magazine, and Literary Shanghai, among others. She recently won the 2021 McIntyre Light Verse Award.