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| 2025/08/16 12:55:19瀏覽78｜回應0｜推薦0 | |
〈Fairy Tales of the Windy City〉
[1] The Binding Stitch: The 17-Kilometer Coastline Unfold the first page, a hardcover fairy tale picture book— the 17-kilometer coastline, a green binding stitch. On the left page, the azure sea beneath a gilded sunset, several fishing boats cut through the waves, each a dash. Terns wheel above, commas in flight, linking clauses across the sky.
On the right page, the windbreak forest: its latticework bike paths meander like sheep intestines, a favorite “connect-the-dots” puzzle for schoolchildren.
The tide rises, erasing the fiddler crabs’ doorplate numbers (they never registered their households, nor paid taxes). Pufferfish and octopus—temporary extras on stage— have no time for makeup or costume before the waves rush them onto the theater. Dialogue omitted, they act in pantomime: helplessly thrashing, flailing, bubbles rising like muffled cries.
Sand piles become a fairy-tale castle, mangrove twigs planted upright, streetlamps and roadside trees. Sand crabs patrol like sentries, while my footprints press solemn seals into the sand— a copyright registration. Yet the next wave erases the story with a careless stroke.
[2] Floral Waltz: Eighteen Peaks Mountain After the spring awakening, insects and birds stretch in the lullaby of crisp rain. Sunlight licks the soft pink cheeks of flower buds. The spring breeze gently lifts the hair of willows, combing them into stylish chignons— an impressionist touch.
Among branches, forest birds hop across colorful piano keys, striking a lilting waltz. Beetle gentlemen in bowties escort flower ladies in gowns onto the dance floor.
My bride, the spring goddess crowned with blossoms, leads a wedding procession winding along mountain trails. Trumpeting lilies blow their suona horns, their piercing tones echoing through valleys. Blooms exchange bees as engagement rings, their voices weaving polyphonic choruses.
A regiment of roses marches, their batons bright with rainbow-tailored tuxedos, while mountain cherries line the path, fairy wands sparking fire into the wind— like that year, 1945, when American bombs rained fire across the slopes. That coloring book, filled with smoke and gunpowder, still has not faded.
[3] Gourmet Jungle: At the Temple of the City God Shop signs crowd the alleys: a winding jungle of delicacies. Oyster omelets, fried rice noodles, meatball soup lie in ambush, while the nerve endings of taste buds thrill with anticipation.
The true temple of pilgrims is the stomach; the City God, his face blackened by incense smoke, sits upright in solemn duty, naturally playing the stern role— and still must understand every dialect, north and south.
Grass jelly drink and aiyu jelly share a lineage of cooling clarity. When the summer heat nags like a wife’s scolding, trust your lips and tongue to believe in them.
Fish soups, meat soups— their plots tangled in boiling broth, like heroes turned outlaws in chaos. No one can unravel their past lives, their every battle.
In this jungle, every pilgrim is a reindeer without direction, burning incense, making vows, placing secrets on the City God’s altar. (It is said the City God, long overworked, never demands overtime pay.)
A lottery stick is drawn— within rhymed riddles, ambiguous metaphors hide. One unearths flickering glimmers of meaning, untangles wisdom as fine as hair.
And then returns to the penned pasture, dutifully eating grass, sleeping, raising children, punching in, punching out.
Winner of the First Prize, Poetry Category, 2009 Zhúqiàn (Hsinchu) Literary Awards. 〈風城童話繪本〉
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