Angkor Wat Siem Reap Cambodia

Sandi Stromberg

September 7, 2025

I even love the monstrous roots

of ancient trees straddling temple walls, their tentacles 

clinging to sandstone. Carved faces

of gods look down on me, waiting, as they have

over centuries, for offerings—rice and pineapple,

clinking coins. In this land of harsh jungles,

a hot wind blows dust. Across the pond,

pink and white lotus sway. 

Beside the water, under fluttering scarves, 

stall-keepers sit on their haunches, birds 

with folded wings. A position of long endurance 

and patience unknown to me.

Three monks pad up narrow stone steps, 

four more pass through hallways, 

ignoring voluptuous apsaras dancing in bas reliefs. 

The pedestals of stone nagas, their menacing cobra heads, 

send shivers through my body. No matter 

their semi-deity status, their myths—

dragons of water, bringers of rain, 

linkers of sky and earth with their rainbows. 

A snake is still a snake. It’s no wonder 

they were worshipped. Don’t most religions

compose prayers to placate fears?

At sunset, elephants plod the steep hill 

carrying tourists to a temple and its view. 

A cacophony of voices fills the air, 

a Babel of languages as cicadas sing. 

Then, as sun touches the horizon, 

the jungle falls silent. Hush. Elephants

kneel as though in prayer, awaiting

the star’s descent. In its afterglow, 

my mind fills with the soft sibilants 

of Sanskrit—sacred, enduring, mysterious. 

Sandi Stromberg lives in Houston, Texas, after 20 years as an expatriate. Widely published in small journals, she has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of the Net, and was a juried poet in the Houston Poetry Fest eleven times. Her poetry collection Frogs Don’t Sing Red was released by Kelsay Books in 2023. Her second collection will be released in early 2026. She is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review and guest edited two volumes of poetry: Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston and Echoes of the Cordillera with Lucy Griffith.