The moth-heart hours
doubt-dusted the moon
an always open eye
even silence
resonates
a night has a tenor
some brittle tone
a wave breaks
but what of it
the shore is not
a home
February 4
In the elevator
without provocation
a man began
to recite
all of Rumi’s
The Guest House
breathless
and done
by when we reached
the top of the hospital
every morning
a new arrival
a task to stay
as steely
as the stainless
doors the same
face presented
to every floor–
closed.
Some momentary
awareness comes
the body also
a form of conveyance
and pain its sharpest tone
February 1
Crescent moon
above the skyline
so many offices
with lights on,
all night, still
mostly empty
vacant eyes
and you can’t
really see a city
from inside
but at the crest
of the hill
there’s songbirds
and dawn
January 31
Hours–
almost a
possessive.
None of these
nights are quite
the same,
a passer-by,
rain showers, and here,
a startling scent
of spring–
something
blooming early
and unseen,
untimely, free
from that tie
that binds
so tightly, so
coarse a cord–
it’s morning,
already, again
January 25
The sky
just before dawn
is dark electric,
expectant.
In almost
every sense
the word
progression
means progress,
except here,
at the margins.
The sky is blue
as airless blood,
as secret blood,
as all the terrible
beauty
that I’d rather
not know.
January 18
All these words are easy
to write: In the grove,
purple orchids delve into air,
at night, the squat palm by the door
is a fistful of feathers.
But you, mi amor—
Bird calls bubbling, water
around a drain, even inland
from Hanelei the world is water,
breezes like rain among fat
rubber leaves. I sit and watch
stray cats prowl beneath
the lanai like soft gray
afterthoughts, impervious
to my calls. All day, big waves,
heard even from the taro fields.
Some things remain
comfortably beyond me.
January 16
Princeville, sleepless,
the breeze in the curtain
the only other soul–
even here
sometimes the night
finds me wanting
January 11
Napali coast so easy
on the eyes hills softened
by mist waves blunted
by distance except
sometimes falling
like a rifle shot a retort
and then that silence
that so underscores
the drama that
preceded it high surf
warning we watched
it glut dry coves appetites
whetted for destruction
the ocean rampant
avenging and we argued
about the height of the waves
breaking far offshore
and if any were whales
and it may be tempting
to think clarity
with distance but in fact
that is wrong
January 10
An ending is forcibly also
a beginning–
On the train from the airport,
distant mountains under
alpenglow, the air cold
and friable, and all these
memories like shards,
catching the light
and so irreparable–
a minute passed
is gone.
[Thank you for all your kind comments while I was away– looking forward to catching up on everyone’s posts]
January 9: Revisiting July 31
Hope clinging tenaciously
like the burrs on the carpet
on the floor of this beach house,
small impalers, causing us to jump
and curse loudly despite children
sprawled everywhere,
not mine.
We spoke in French,
they said those birds
we saw were not pelicans
but I insisted they were,
these the birds of my childhood
of all my coasts.
Then grown tired
of conjugating tenses
and drinking wine
I just sat silent, listening,
imaging the next day’s drive.
Leaving early,
I woke before dawn,
the house still sleeping,
went down to the beach
where an eagle faced the sea,
faced into the wind
as did I, and it sang,
a chirpy warbling thing
unexpected from a raptor’s beak.
A lone pair of fresh tracks
made straight for the tide line,
a coyote, must have turned,
and only recently out of sight.
On my way out I saw one
of everything,
in the dunes, a velvety buck,
much later a doe, and another
coyote who leaped across
the road and dove into
a field of cranberries,
unaccompanied,
and I think it’s funny
the hardest things to let go
of are the things
I never had,
just hoped for
OPTIONAL POETRY 