Susan Olmstead Wang

On my ever first, ever big, ever adventure fifty years ago

I kept a diary bound in cloth printed like an ancient explorer’s map of the known-to-the-West world

Sailing ships, astrolabes, continents with Latin names: Asia Minor Natolia, Aethiopicus

From green cool rural Adirondack mountains and blue clear Cayuga Champlain lakes,

I went on a long gray plane ride in long gray aluminum plane

To hot wet red and yellow menre honghuang Taipei city

Where the sliding glass doors of the airport arrival area

pulled apart like stage curtains on a play already in motion, already in noise

renao, rere naonao

I dragged my cloth luggage, bound in 1970s psychedelic colors orange, green, and raspberry, toward the portal –

On the way, the colors transformed to Mandarin juzi tangerine, star fruit yangtao yellow green, and fire dragon huolong fruit pink

Brilliant subtropical light threatened my pale Nordic skin and eyes, pupils retreating to pinpricks

I stepped outside onto fiery hot pavement and raised my eyes above swarming crowds, honking taxis,

following the qingse green up up YangMing Mountain,

to the everywhere-above-earth beloved sky qingse blue

unbound, to begin