A hill under rain. Today no seagulls wheel and whistle like scratched glass above a half-filled lot. Which isn’t to say silence, no, this city expands like vapor to fill a space, yellow cranes like stork legs, that idea of nascence– which doesn’t actually countermand death– a square of sky where a building once stood, rubble-dust dampened by another sudden shower. A hill from trees, and land from sea, just like the weather, living here, […]
Tableau: fake flowers in an enameled clay vase, the kind with birds and bird-like lines– yesterday’s coffee rewarmed, the bitterness doused in lait partiellement écrémé– bright horns gild the otherwise silence, some neighbor listening softly to Ring of Fire– beyond, the water. Yesterday we watched the tide sweep out, skookumchuch slipping through fingers of land, with vortexes and contrary eddies, spoken, taken aback, deadly– orange urchins, broken like eggshells, littered the rocks, exposed and lit […]
Half-asleep at the border crossing, behind some Iranian family at the duty-free, the mountains behind the distant city with still -illuminated ski areas, like shocking clouds, the highway a slick of electricity– aren’t we both always chasing arrival? . Here by morning the harbour is the same dirty emerald as the night before, raindrops cling to nascent buds with no wind to shake them free or shift the fog. A sailor rigs his boat. The […]
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
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
OPTIONAL POETRY 