Back to the Sun

Back to the sun with half a cup
of Americano to go fathers
looking for their children as they
head off to work out on the open
ocean the night still a little fuzzy
at the edges of morning questions
of remorse are usual why do we
do the things we do the old men
at the coffee shop snapping
their newspapers against the wind
asking why they the other guys
do the things they do and why
the punishment isn't longer more
difficult whatever happened
to an eye for a tooth or was it
no no there's no good answer for such
crimes so much hope dashed
against the walls an epic slaughter
nothing to replace what's been lost
on the horizon Botelho's water
jets into the air over the sunburned
fields flies keep busy around my ears
and over the hood of my black truck
where I'm hunched keeping my pen
moving in case I have to stop
and look up or make a decision
overhead a myna sits on the higher
of three taut cables looking hopefully
to the east and above that a plane
moves like a shining mote in the big
blue eye while everything here
on earth clings to the dark center
as if word is out that justice
will never be done which can be
taken more than one way and for one
eye there is no certainty it has truly
come to that all we can do
is hope for better reception up the road
and call again to see if the kids
are okay find out did they make it

Leave It Open

LEAVE IT OPEN

We start the day early each with our list

my wife taking hers down the coast in her

fist calls me saying Maui’s unusually clear

maybe I’d take my walk where I could see 

but I set about loading the cuttings one

more thing on my list leading to another

until a change in the weather reminds me

I’d better head makai to find Haleakala 

gigantic on the horizon a floating blue

mountain drawing all the sky's shadows down

to the dark bowl of sea into the forbidding

channel called Alenuihaha where clouds

shrink and fall laughing into whitecaps

but in a scientifically plausible reversal

night begins to inch its sapphire way

upward to heaven—connecting under

to upper world with Maui’s sleeping

heart beating against what’s reasonable.

I park in long cane grass and thread my

arms through a gate’s galvanized frame

swung open expecting and desiring

more than beauty can give me when I

notice one fencepost leaning away from

the long barbed lines of wire nothing

standing still not even my joy as it

happens not on my list when a tractor

bucks down the field’s hard-packed

edge toward me and I draw a circle

in the air signing Shut the Gate? but

the farmer smiles and shakes his head No

so I follow him out till I’m in my truck

—and I picture my wife returning home

her list the long road map of her day

her hand finding my own list still clean

on the kitchen counter
and I imagine her beauty
laughing against what’s reasonable

I Look at the Moon

I look at the moon and think of the world these words
will never touch up there in the steadfast blue
somehow lunar reality seems upended
while the moving dot I call my mind
begs me to hold up a thumb and compare

the cuticle I call my own with this
heavenly satellite its light never its own
as the sun plays with us no it's more
a piece of cloud laughing like Kohala
mountains asking us to see through

the illusion that cannot possibly be nothing
everything conspires this way
into a sort of symbology of souls
meeting and colliding themselves
heavenly bodies with a soundtrack

that throws us somewhat
we check our watches note the location
establish a few reference points or
coordinates and breathe into our
curvature of make-believe

rest or stillness and soon enough
the half-moon becomes the top
of Buddha's curly head lifted so far
off the planet there's a quiet gasp
who said that how did we get here

and what's the point surely
I'm just a visitor here surely
I kept my promise and it's time
to move on surely the pages
will keep lifting and fluttering

in these whirligig gusts until
the story ends or begins or flips
to that really gripping scene
the one where kingship is at stake
and we're ready to sacrifice everything

and though we know there's nothing
extraordinary really going on
what with the sounds of traffic
the engines belching and droning
the voices of strangers inserting

words words words into this moment
inside our own galaxy
the alarm is out and when the moon
disappears behind a rooftop
our blood runs wild

To Watch You Walk

That's how it all began.

The gallery the sepia colored photographs
of ships against the quay at low tide
the harbor less silted the men in the rigging
small boys and girls appearing twice
 or more in those days when picture-taking
was slow and the exposure long
for the youngsters of that sea town
in those days and now those youngsters'

children how many years? the generations
looking out to sea all this time
collecting samphire on the marshes
slipping through the mud-slick estuary
each new moon and here they stand
clustered 'round the old prints
the forgotten photographic plates
retrieved from attics now the photographer

from London is in town and so he stands
on the edge looking across the figures
meeting and recognizing great grandmothers
and each other in this way
the gallery walls holding up their past
where the past likes to be
at eye level though young Frank
or Susan need holding up themselves

to see and through all this
your elegance in long Bedouin colors
long dark hair pinned back
with your Hawaiian shell comb
the heavy black-veined turquoise stones
hung quietly I see this quietly

how you walk head high
like an exotic bird gliding
through peoples of another place
tied there by the pull of the sea
tied there so firmly they almost
do not see your peregrinations
your way of touching down
and passing through

If I Tell Her

If I tell her I'm available
she will look at me and smile
and leave me guessing her intention
whether pleasantly informed
or cynically inspired

It will not do she said
and rescued me from doubt
to blame the clock the calendar the phone
the internet the outside world your gout

I waited wishful of her sage advice
my inner voice cried tell me more
but she stood back as if the play were mine
and so it went reversing roles

The ping-pong ball flew wild
I lunged and with a snap of wrist
returned it to the line
I wonder she said if ritual of sorts
makes intimacy a little easier

I wondered what she meant
ritual? really? like weddings
funerals birthday parties and state dinners?
engagements made or broken?
contracts drawn and quartered
or simply holidays celebrated
carved up with drumsticks
and requisite cranberry relish

Is that what intimacy looks like?
again the space between closer
and further apart like the breathing
like the ribcage like the bird
we call the heart

I Saw a Garden

I saw a garden I was small
bushes flowers weeds were all
the same to me back then
things green woody bright or dead
contained within three walls
we lived in the city
shared a house with other families
though the war was over
several years before

one bathroom for the house
a manual wringer squeezed the water
from the hand-washed clothes
and lurked like some enamel clad
iron beast on the way to the garden

safe in the garden hours alone
though small I'd read King Arthur
his knights his Roundtable
exploits and adventures
robins and sparrows sang out
as I crashed through the thicket
swinging my sword of milkweed stalk
snapped off that morning

cobwebs hung dew laden
like lace set to dry in the sun
I left them there

Boil

An angry sound with no pause at all
between the lip-pressed consonant
and the gush the release of fluid
the non-stoppability innocent enough

when it led to the whistle in the little
passageway my parents called the kitchen
the short window-less hall connecting
our shared bedroom to the front room

did we live there? I only remember solitary
hours crouched into the corner
where the BBC poured forth
Dan Dare Pilot of the Future

or the Light Service of endless classical music
50 years later the sounds with no names
never knowing Bach from Beethoven
until decades of repetition
 
imbued my soul with signatures
of emotions or calculus
all this released by the morning kettle
but those other sorts of eruptions

the doubling of bubble that
came on my knees all too often the knees
given over on Sundays to the hard boards
St. Mary's-on-the-Quay before the Lord

the genuflection that lasts so long
I had to sink back on my heels
till I disappeared from view
and my mother's knuckle would find

the tender place between my wings
and I would rise up once more
for Et Cum Spirit Tu Tuo
or a chime and glimpse

of the bedazzling circle of tasteless bread
and come away rubbing my right-
angled places now dotted with red
swellings the pus-filled follicles

of the post-war diet the boiled
sweets all calm on the surface
the world at peace but our mornings
unto the altar of God with a boil

and so on till I left home

It's Always One of Those Days

It's always one of those days you find yourself
gently winkling some imaginary debris
out of the corner of your right eye
I suppose when a sleeper comes away
on the tip of your index finger
that's reality and you can move on

when I was a kid I read that Crusoe
kept track with marks and when his
indigenous friend aka the slave turned up
he was named Friday

what if we were all named after the day
we all turned up Hi nice to meet you
I'm Sunday...but then there's the question
of turning up which I think more forgiving
than being born or that other cruder
handing on of the genetic line in the term
delivered

no I like turning up because it gives
both the turnee and turner
a balanced sense of presence
but I suppose what you don't want
to hear as you commence your stay
because being here is one thing
telling the tale quite another

what you don't want is someone
to yawn widely and let out of their mouths
the damning phrase Oh it's always
one of those days...as if there couldn't
possibly be anything at all remotely
heroic in your turning up just
an ordinary event

no shooting star just a little dust
found its way to the corner
of somebody's eye and waiting
to be revealed as real
or imaginary

It repeats

It repeats until you drag yourself reluctantly away and begin the search.
It's not in the receiver not in the basket with the remotes nor nestled down
in the cushions of the couch maybe there's time to find one of the other three
the one in the study oh yes still in its cradle a curious name for something
small black and boxy that bawls out its electronic repetitions until you
feed it with your now, your center shifted to another moment...
Thich Nhat Hanh all those letter Hs there for breath he says Thank you
telephone thank you for bringing me into the present but what if it's the
obnoxious neighbor or the annual policeman's fundraiser or the Obama
campaign and right at dinner-time the beans green and soft in their pan
the mashed potatoes and celeriac hot over the steam and yesterday's
brilliant and dynamic flash of presence stripped of its shimmering skin
and sizzling in the pan so thank you is in order I suppose
not just to the repeating cadences of the phone
or the living brilliance the other end of the wireless line
who initiated the call thank you to the way it
the way the present moment we call now keeps teaching and
waking us up poking us to rise up from our slide into hibernation
get out of our caves and blink into the sunlight

What Do We Need

I say these things happen
at night while we lie sleeping
in the morning green rain
picked and gathered

Circle of wicker on the doorstep
open up by twisting and letting go
step out into another turn of the planet
face into the sun even with the clouds
between always something gathering
collecting and passing through

What don't we need
the love of hate will do
the green left to wither
and a helpless pull away
from the center don't you wonder
what would happen

Action now
action places if you please
don't you wonder about
movement without all this
say before our tongues
got tied up and we were left out

Dying of thirst
falling out of bed
out of a tree
out of memory

Evening on the Suez Canal

Evening on the Suez Canal and not a pint of Guinness to be seen
the dark peat strain of an Irish night locked up tight
between the ears a blood red beret keeping the lid
on stars come down to look out from archways and porticoes

rooftops too you might imagine Oh the cream at the top
of a glass sure isn't it the imperial pint you're after
well isn't it the imperial pint of oil that brought us here mate
and what are we doing here at all dressed up for a cold

mountain night with no hope of a turf fire when all the world
burns morning noon and teatime 'Tis cold enough at sundown
sure and the smokin' chimneys no more and the biscuits
broken in the saucer the cows in their lower field

with the old man takin' one last nip before he retrieves
the well-darned socks from the soot-black bar
over the embers 'Tis here in the gut now the fire
spices ground up in the devil's own kitchen

don'tcha know be jaysus paprika and cumin cayenne
and the little children chasin' after our heels
like dark sparks all day where d'ye s'pose
they put their heads where's their mammies

and that flowered water they gave us now back
at the little café them pointing to the vine climbing
up the walls the flowers too comin' down like stars
wouldn't a pint of Guinness go down beautifully now!