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
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
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
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.
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.
Princeville, sleepless, the breeze in the curtain the only other soul– even here sometimes the night finds me wanting
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 […]
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]
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 […]
What settles? You. A draft. The foundation of a house. This wind picks up but never gets alarming. And I can’t tell disappointment from lack of inertia, as they’re both so drab and gray and boring.
OPTIONAL POETRY 