Hoea Road Bees

I often walk past what I call The Goat Place as I head up Hoea Road shaded from the morning sun on my 45 minute circuit connecting Leikolu, Hawi Road makai and Akoni Pule. The last stretch leads to my morning reward, the coffee shop... But now I understand what the big nubian was trying to say, jogging right up to me on the road one time, but all she got was a patronizing retort: What are you doing? You'll get run over, momma goat! Now go on back home!

She was really saying, There's bees in there! Help! There's bees in there! Help!

That's how come Bee Friend, Golden Maverick and I found ourselves in a rickety, teetering, hanging-by-a-toenail outbuilding at The Goat Place, with the wind lifting and banging down the corrugated aluminum roofing like a soundtrack for a seedy motel, and a flock of kids bleating and crying like the Big Bad Wolf was standing right there in the shadows of that old monkey pod tree filing his nails, whistling a preprandial tune, and the three of us looking hard at a dark mass of honey bees shaped like North America up in the far corner.

We cleared the stack of fluorescent light tubes, passing seven or eight at a time man to man until we could stand right under the bees.

In our first experience with this, at the house above the hardware store, we saw only little pukas in the outside wall cladding where those bees entered and left. Here, the interior wall was eaten away in that shape and that shape was a mass of bees fixated on comb. When we pulled more cladding away from the wall we saw comb structure floor to ceiling in length.

Just like a tree, said BF. That was his passion, seeing bees in their natural setting, left to their own devices, not cooped up in precisely measured frames at the mercy of the honey merchant.

We were here to help the Goat Lady whose grandfather fell and hurt himself working out here amongst three generations’ worth of jobs left undone and calamitous disarray. The only pure things left in the mess were the Goat Lady’s heart and all those goats. Beautiful, soft, curious, frisky and at the moment, petrified, bawling, squalling goats of all ages. Actually, we were here to save the bees. Who knows how long they’d been nesting here in the wall’s cavity, so long their combs started at the door and worked their way under the cladding across every stud. Long, grey, papery, and dried-out by the door, the combs had reached the corner where we found ourselves staring and wondering outloud, There’s a lot of bees!

BF reached into the corner with his improvised bee collector made from a dustbuster, some duct tape and a couple of cutaway plastic water bottles. He’d reach through a cloud of angry bees and I wondered how this adventure was going to do down, because I couldn’t see any turning point, any progress. It seemed overwhelming. I saw plundered combs laid out on a piece of wall off to one side. Combs still heavy with pollen or brood. Some stained dark, a dull, uncomfortable, old smokers’ fingers kind of stain, not pleasing to the eye like the amber-colored combs we knew and loved. That’s why we thought there’d been some poisoning here, but now I don’t know.

Once BF brought a piece of comb over and said, Honey! Look at this honey! and dropped it in the Top Bar Hive box we’d set in the midst of the rubble. Countless creatures all abuzz clouded around BF’s head, going for his breath. Some succeeded in crawling up inside his veil, driving him outside to regroup. One stung him right on the tip of his nose. For all that commotion in BF’s corner, there was an alarming number of bees amassed on the discarded combs. They were gorging themselves on honey or pollen, we supposed, or tending to brood.

The plan was to get the bees in BF’s hive he’d made over the weekend. It was a handsome, cedar TBH, complete with viewing window and room for a dozen top bars.

GM held the cut comb sections while I stitched them onto top bars using dental floss and a length of wire looped at one end for a needle. The Goat Lady had loaned us first a cane knife when we’d asked for a machete, and later a six inch kitchen knife. We used one or the other to slice through comb we wanted to keep, to put in the hive. We went for comb covered in bees. We’d brush them aside but some got pinched by our fingers or pierced by the needle. Sometimes we exposed a flank of white interiors in those antique-looking cells. It upset me to cut through brood but at least I knew this was “keeper comb.”

After two or three bars had been stitched and placed in the hive, I looked out at our scene of chaos, bees now filling the shack’s airspace, shards of glass crunching underfoot as we tiptoed through a disarray of tackle, electrical innards and corroded casings and coverings for who knows what, and in that moment I confess a little doubt crept into my brain...so I reached for another top bar and picked at the dental floss with my sticky, goatskin-covered fingers...

GM was a stalwart. His hands got stung so bad through his gloves they were swollen for days after. But he kept coming back with variations on duct tape around his jacket cuffs and gloves. He was quietly determined. Without that we couldn’t have done it.

BF finally got the vacuum to work right and started collecting bee clusters the size of grapefruit. We got into a rhythm at last. GM and I had a top bar stitched and ready with more good comb around the same time BF was opening a dense jumble of bees from between the two water bottles. We’d slide back the flat rectangle covering the growing hive and snug a top bar in place while BF shook a new group into the depths of the box with a strange, small thwack.

BF’s earlier collections were insignificant and as he shook them into the hive, sometimes while I had only one side of a comb stitched, I despaired to see the bees once captured now rise up and back into the angry cloud. But eventually the bees had good reason to stay in the hive. They had pollen. They had brood comb. And they had honey. Honey drips signed themselves on every surface of the hive, attracting bees, calming them down. And I attribute some of the hive’s settling down vibe to BF’s earlier introduction of that chunk of glistening, oozing comb.

So we were getting somewhere! Each time we slid back the cover, the mass of bees stayed inside. I noticed bees fanning on the hive’s perimeters, no doubt their pheromone signalling to the rest that this is the place. We had turned a corner.

GM took a turn vacuuming bees and I kept stitching. BF cut the remaining comb free from the studs. Eventually there were no more top bars. No more room in the hive. For the last cupful I moved one of the followers, or end-plates back and then pushed it gently in place, imagining all those legs and eyes and bodies getting gently squeezed further under the comb sections we hoped would make the beginnings of a new hive.

We left the hive overnight, with the three entry/exit holes open. BF said if the queen was in the box, the stragglers would find their way into the hive to join her.

At sunset that same day, I went by with a buddy of BF’s to check on the hive. I wanted to take pictures but couldn’t bring myself to get too close without the protective clothing. The angry cloud was gone but the memory of it was fresh. He was great. He said How’s your camera work? And in swim trunks and tee-shirt got up close, opened the viewing door and got a pretty good picture of the full hive.

When BF, MM and I went back Tuesday, we were concerned to see a fair cluster of bees right up hard in the corner again. BF was convinced the queen was still up there. But we had come to take the hive away so we loaded it up in my truck and took it up to a willing place off Kinnersley, right on the ditch. Let’s hope there’s a queen in there.

Hens Lay Eggs

Preceded by much fanfare and trumpeting on the part of the rooster and his young accomplice whose notes sound like a banshee gargling. These arias of the demented stitch the darkest hour to the dawn with admirable though exceedingly irrational regularity or should I say determination. These outpourings are full-throated expressions of a tribe convinced it is their clarion calls that bring back the light. No light, no hen's arse visible and therefore no egg, no life, no omelet with salsa, a kind of sunrise I have enjoyed over the years. That perfect ovoid so strong and yet so fragile at the same time has its own dawn of course. From nesting box to wheel barrow, or recently my neighbor's fishing boat, the egg appears to the garrulous satisfaction of the hen. My neighbor's hens cluck and cackle between ungodly hiccups for long stretches upon producing their prize. Where is the rooster at these moments? Off smoking a cigar with a smug twisted beak of a smile or scratching the compost for a fat wriggler with his terrible claws? Not likely. He is mute, silenced and humbled by the hen's industry but more than that he is struck dumb by her scratchy acapella. He recognizes the voice of creation when he hears it. "I did it! I did it! Whee! Look at ME! I did it! I did it! Look at ME! Heh, heh, heh..." or words to that effect. He stands in the shadows agog at this because in his dark heart he knows he only believes he turned on the light, that it's all an act of faith, one of pure conviction, and nothing more... Why else would he call out so hideously at 4AM? 4:22AM? 5:09AM? 5:17AM? The sun don't come through those trees in the east till near 6AM this time of year. He has no idea. It's all hit or miss with our fanatic chanticleer. He's only good for the red speck in the egg, which frankly I can do without, or the roar of gambling maniacs who throw two of the humiliated creatures together in gladiatoral combat to duke it out, sometimes to the death. Talk of channeling the cock's aggression! Now that's something to crow about. Why even Shakespeare himself and all his glorious poetry started out in a cockpit did he not? Meanwhile our beloved hen has waited shifty eyed on tree branch or roost all night for the decent hour. She it is who wins a place in fable, myth and humor. When she waddled about lickety-split screaming The sky is falling, most of the world believed her...who wouldn't? One listens to such a creature. Who did Jack steal as the giant snored? Not the rooster! Come the break of day it's the illustrious egg we're after, not the announcement that it MIGHT be dawn in say, two hours and 17 minutes from now, again and again, with all the humans abed in the radius counting the interminable seconds thinking there might be at least a chance of a pattern in this madness, but no, the bastard pierces our peace at random. He has no mercy. His news has no substance. She, on the other hand, gives us a sun we can taste, poached, boiled, fried, baked, scrambled, oh, the countless preparations given over to the lovely hen's presentations. She's a gift. He can go to hell and stand at those gates, not mine. He can jolly well scream his gizzard out for the rest of eternity. "I think we got a sinner! Yes I think we got another sinner! [Annoying random pause.] Hey! I think we got a sinner." Meantime, here in heaven, I'll have mine over easy, please.

The Singing Wires

Parked under the singing wires above Upolu Airport. Driver's side window open. It's a deep plaintive song that continues and continues like a bass lullaby, like a long bow drawn on a cello in a tunnel, like a god come down to earth as a busker...a song moving west until west becomes east. A steady procession of clouds carries this theme across the horizon obscuring our neighbor island of Maui from view, but there are variations in the foreground of this composition worth considering. For example, grass blades dance in tight ensembles in adjacent fields. Tall, dried weeds spared by the mower, looking good against scrappy haole koa bushes showing naught but their dried seed casings all flourish along the margins of the one-lane road. Then there's the low sweep of a single pigeon across the grain of the wind, disappearing in a tuft, in a hillock. More striking is the sudden flash of white as a cattle egret makes a break for the heights but gets buffeted down like a lost shirt on a 19th century Parisian picnic, one woman hunkered down undressed on the spills of her own careless blue skirts amidst the pines, another femme fatale stooped over the surface of the shallow stream while a turbaned man twists a stout stick down the neck of a questionable claret bottle. Another man talks incessantly about his bad luck with kites. Or the cattle themselves, black and white yearlings tearing and tearing at the green ground. Covered in mute flies on their leeward hides are the cows. Or another egret's sudden rise from the margin, its specialized short sword beak pointing into the wind, a pose held for more than a second over the barbed wire that stitches the main road to the ocean a couple of miles away, a threshold photograph, were I an opportunistic sort of bloke and if the cattle people didn't hold the bird in such low esteem. I notice my heavy double-cab, Japanese-made truck moves gently side to side as the song's pitch climbs inside the wind for an unpredictable ride. All this can be quantified by a qualified scientist of course, even described accurately by a qualified naturalist, even dispassionately and without the emotional baggage of the late 19th century by a certified poet, say an Imagist, certainly not one confused by the Georgian period, and finally, even juxtaposed out of all recognition, as an entirely new composition by a Postmodernist, but really, really, it's about as Zen as it gets, the odd flash of a picnic on the Seine coming in, a meditation on clouds, illusion, islands and songs the wind makes in electric cables and telephone lines, meantime trucks peopled with engineers, dairy men and construction workers who insert their eight cylinder doppler sound bytes into this performance, as do cars rented and driven by tourists, also those larger, more familiar signatures, local Toyotas and Chevrolets, the occasional Ford...a part-time barista from the town coffee shop walks by incognito, swinging her arms, hair braided and tucked into her baseball cap but she's nowhere in sight now and the mysteries of orchestrating silent passages like that escape me. Here I keep writing for some reason, making small decisions at various points of hesitation in my linear progression across this page. I feel that old familiar aching which runs from my throat down the length of my chest. Maybe a ribcage injury that day in Paris. Maybe indigestion, you know, the concoction called mocha making itself felt, all those exotic places in one blend, the cow's milk, a rumination on a field of green gone white, the Colombian espresso, bandido's with their toenails painted red hiding in coffee plantations, and the chocolate...I think of Montezuma, how such a powerful fellow treasured his morning chocolate, how quickly his kingdom came to pass with the coming of the Spanish, how long and mournful this deep chord sustained by the wind as it heads west across the white-flecked expanse of ocean, how enough is enough and the moment has arrived when I must pocket my pen and go for my morning walk. I'll cut across the grain of the wind with my white shirt flapping like a kite strung across my ribcage and keep listening to the song of the wires all the way to the ocean. And back to my truck.

Itchy Palms

Have you ever experienced itchiness so drop-everything and get-down-to-it you end up biting your palm? Not drawing blood, mind you. None of your kinky middle school settings in a dark, dank wood with corn starch makeup and extended eye teeth sensuously pulsing against the ever-so-closed lips... Nope, just downright primitive cat and dog to hell with scratching that damned itch, I'm going to bite it to death. Will that cancel out the chance money is coming my way? What a strange association, as if playing the palm of one's hand like a flamenco guitarist suggests to the observer a certain money-lender in Venice by the name of Shylock who dwelleth in the country of Shakespeare's imagination. It's a profound sensation, itchy palms. What could it be? You won't or most likely won't be receiving mosquito bites on that toughened epidermal region with its Mound of Venus, plains and deltas, not to mention the life line and all those cross-hatchings representing children. I remember well the full-bearded chiromancer, Karl Marx come back as a gypsy, up three steps inside his caravan, okay, the image is coming in stronger now, I'm seeing Portabello Road on a Saturday during that market of elbows and musty books among the vegetables. He took my palm and suddenly, disarmingly, took on a rather paternal, caring tone. He gave me assurances that my time had not yet come and that I would likely excel at some unspecified sport much to my own surprise. I'm still waiting. But it's enough that he was on my side. He actually got the number of children right, if you count a miscarriage and an abortion, two memories which sadden me instantly and deeply with their memory. My two beautiful daughters bring me back right away to the light. How we tuck those painful experiences away and grow thick skin overall, as if each wound, each splinter of fate will eventually get swallowed up by that first point of contact we call our skin. No wonder it presents us with insatiable itches from time to time. I'm afraid the money explanation goes empty handed. I'm here gnawing like an animal on my own hand, tasting and attempting to devour some small demon who works his or her way from inside out. After a small frenzy where nothing like a protein or a carbohydrate materializes, I stare at my outstretched palm, a bit reddened beneath my Line of Intuition. I'm looking at a map of my destiny as if it's day one. So many lines and no signs to go by. How am I ever going to find my way?

Wounds Too Fresh For Panache

Re-reading March 11 NYT review of "Scottsboro Boys" came across the critic's bottom line for why the musical doesn't quite click, that the racial issues are still "too raw," too close, even though events date to 1930s...all that time past and wounds too fresh for "panache"—Realizing how self-indulgent my reflection here...I can see how the "Much Ado" chapter I'm stuck on brings me up short in the same way, though personally and most idiosyncratically—allowing (somehow choice comes into this) a kind of [Altan's Moll Dubh A'Ghleanna plays while I write this] contrived reluctance to leave the edges where they are—now thinking of my precious "immediate" audience especially Jack W who would be interested in the structural "factoids" as TF described them but also the work world the way it was for me back then and how it changed...TF, sitting in that Stinson place we rented, put me onto Bill Bryson's style of writing "what's in front of him" and later on dropping in those interesting factoids...how "Much Ado" is about so much spinning of wheels and the betrayal with too quick endorsement is my own somehow and poor theatre history, a beautiful woman told to hide her calloused hands, for surely she has worked hard and with every conceivable medium all these millennia...the set onstage in "M.A." becomes the book imagined, the book I cannot access because I have screened it out—cannot reach it, get to it, made it too precious, the elaborate construction overlaid on the original—wasn't that the root challenge of the RSC? Balancing interpretation w/the play's truth. I suppose the literati would say "presenting" that truth to this generation, the current mode, "making it accessible" and so on. Now it feels I'm really making a big deal out of nothing.

The Nested Dolls

When my oldest daughter was visiting a few months ago, I saw she had taken down the nested dolls from our library shelves. I said nothing. Gave her that moment happily, or rather, left her in peace. There she was in that cave of books, a kind of nourishing egg itself, with the grandmother doll opened and all the others in a row on the table. My daughter perched there utterly self-contained, absorbed. From where I stood briefly, passing through, it was a benign, far look. After all, there was childhood with its smooth, rosy and complete complexion split open before her, beings within beings, she herself growing a human being within herself, her own body a nurturing, soft cave now for the new life. It is a miracle, this opening and opening to the life within. And that's something rather peculiar or specific to my daughter, the act of opening. As a child there wasn't a door, a drawer, a box or container she hadn't explored. You could say she was our little Pandora, lifting lids and covers to peek beneath, curious, irresistibly so. Did she release ills into our world, our small world, to run rampant through the house as if we lived in that Greek story? I'd say not. I'd say there was a simple, matter-of-fact sense at the tips of her fingers. What's inside? I don't recall her hoarding like a magpie, no more than our other children with their secret caches and stashes under the stairs or in the too-small-to-bother-with crawl spaces. What's inside? Oh. That. And move on to the next. Perhaps its that cool, detached curiosity which allows her inside the medical profession where it is very useful to ask questions, take a look, satisfy curiosity, and move on to the next possibility. But I won't deny her a moment with her childhood Babushka, the nested Russian dolls. You can imagine the wood turner handling the light wood like egg shells, pinning, spinning, trimming, hollowing out and measuring within a hair's breadth, till the two halves fit and come apart with a squeak. It's quiet in the library now. She has them all undone, the story lined up, generation after generation. Next, the painter with her fine-tipped brushes, outlining arms and scarves, eyes and a distant look to be varnished, glossed up, durable. How long, how far she traveled with her precious cargo within? Mother. Daughter. Granddaughter. And that place held by the one solid piece of this curious puzzle, the newest story carved neat and never entered by the turner's knife. Still so shiny after all these years is the core of this assembly, this putting together and taking apart, this opening up and closing with a final squeak. This is my daughter's moment.

Bee Pollen Catcher

My bee friend called this morning asking for pollen. I togged up with da kine hat&veil over long sleeved shirt, trousers tucked in socks, long gloves. Interrupted a flurry of foragers when I took out the wedge holding open the pollen catcher door. Jiggled the drawer back in place. Shut the door and stood back a ways to see how they took to our second installment. We collected so much pollen our first attempt, two weeks back, that we left the drawer out until we finished off what we had. Turns out I'm sensitive to it...trying to figure out why...mango going off? I'm allergic to mango sap. Maybe that's it.

Wind's calmed down a bit yesterday and today after a week of what my wife calls a punishing wind. True enough, leaves are shredded in the path of the trade wind. Some big palms' new fronds have snapped. Branch down on the driveway. Ironwood tree fallen onto hau. We're due for more wind plus rain next week.

The Vine Wraps Itself

The vine wraps itself around my arm blades
Whitman liked to call leaves poke through
my toes Iʻve taken apart the word sedentary
and found 27 wordlings infants swaddled in neat
rectangles of paper torn from the word of the day
calendar each morning if only this were stillness
of the revolutionary steel spindle sort thoughts
ebb and flow far too much and the FedEx man
is on a first name basis if I were to tug myself
awake what then this collective uncertainty
has subsumed itself into my dreams a sign
surely that this isnʻt going away soon and the body
politic will have difficulty absorbing the impediment
although my core belief in the existence of higher
power without name without end amen lends itself
to the theory of absorption absolution by absorption
absolute with all the requisite chanting and madness
they say the first day of autumn came and went
this week which means itʻs still fall
in the vernacular my teaʻs still hot
the morning filled with tradwinds determined
to pass through and leave nothing behind
yes yes things are still open or closed
some lines some waiting the getting and spending
rich with disparities I heard a landlord
shot his tenantʻs dog to get him to leave
you wonʻt find the word leave in sedentary
but you will find rent at this point
I am looking up the name of this climbing twisting
manifestation of life force the green fuse
on fire in the crook of my elbow pushing
pulling in the name of the green tide of late
growth after the fires of summer tugging
entwining it is nature holding on to my arm
I grab a pen with my free hand grateful
for a soft kiss inside this embrace write
an awkward love poem as dawn breaks

Closed

My worst closed until further notice experience was Altamira
from Santander where we waited three days to get in the country
after militant Basques assassinated a general through blistering
heat on empty roads in one end of Madrid and out the other
all the way to Seville to create the felt covered wine red stage
for the acquisition of Sandeman Port all the while Altamira
was on my mind first I got Montezuma’s Revenge then my
partner who laid low in a hotel back in Santander while I
took the 20 foot scenery lorry winding through the countryside
to the site where years before a little girl had stumbled upon
the entrance to the cave Bison Papa! she shouted I so wanted
to see what she saw but a dark green steel door said otherwise
leaving me to seek out the tourist shop and buy books and cards
about the cave and its paintings poor compensation for being
denied entrance hungry for something to make up for the injustice
I took a branch of eucalyptus from the cave’s locale eucalyptus
that came alive with the scent of compassion in the lorry
and stayed with me till its oils finally dried out an ocean
and a continent later the depths of the cave would have to wait
although my imagination stayed on heedless on the ferry home
I looked out at the cold mean waters of the Bay of Biscay
but something in me had woken up and lingered there
in northern Spain I don’t know why I felt so pulled
to that place to the memory of painting images of animals
underground how one bison’s bulk emerged from the surface
of the ceiling! I saw in photographs how formations
suggested shapes of creatures to the artists’ minds
we can say they were seers bringing their light
to the subterranean passageways that gave up
their walls and canopies in ways that long
preceded Plato’s Allegory I can’t say “this
is what we do” I can only say “this is what
a few of us do” and we would do well
to listen and learn for we are too bound up
in the snares of those who hunt and trap
our desires only to sell our own souls
on the marketplace I like to think I was
good with the closed door that I understood
enough is enough that my breath alone
would decay further the work once hidden
for thousands of years not everything should be
plain understood so I went home and now
they’re grown the seeds of my imagination
come to life and my wife who waited
well perhaps she’s there what’s a lifetime
pass when you’ve passed from this life?
Nothing’s closed to her now while my imagination
is still out there hungry to be allowed in

Open

After last night’s rain all the doors still open
air cooler glad I moved those forty pound bags
of salt under cover I see there’s a good breeze
outside high branches of avocado cedar bamboo
palm lift twist wave I reach for the cup
that breaks the fast night cut short but I
waited till dawn anyway in this alchemy
of remorse and intention arose seeking
that dark cattleya in the next room itself dark
why is the house so reluctant to give up
the night I turned on the light and lifted
the orchid higher so I could see the fiesta
deep inside her unfurled petticoats
Rioja red I look to her this morning
in these strange times so many of us
hunkered down if we’re wise denied
our incidental encounters I turn to this
flower the heavy buds I brought indoors
in days fat with secrecy and now she’s
unfolding her petals calmly slowly
whole days get born then die her leaves
battered and bruised I regret the neglect
suffered there in the orchid shack
too much water and the long reach
of the sun and yet she blooms and
I will deliver my gratitude for her to you

The Relevance Of The Shoreline

[From Jorie Graham “The creeping relevance of the shoreline” in New World]

—

The relevance of the shoreline brings its own edge
I remember this is where you come to fill up again
ocean sounds in the act of replenishing going coming
lines of retreat and advance all in one underfoot
better yet laid down length of spine and best give in
give up give yourself back to whatʻs been emptied out
spilled into the world since you first emerged it’s
a simple act like a cup overflowing at the lip while
above all this the moon’s tug of war with your own
blood stops up all speech though not everyone agrees
sometimes I stand at the edge of the known world
amidst the wreckage of getting and spending ground
down as if it were sand when we say gathering place
this is what we mean it’s what we get leftover
bento containers among the detritus I want to believe
we’ll snap out of it make things good but I feel
outnumbered by ourselves a sense of the sacred
eroded washed up I say less and less anymore
like an old hermit monk poet keep myself to
myself scratch a few words on the walls
of the cave smile when mountains disappear
behind clouds remember the shoreline

Tell Me About A Complicated Man

[“Tell me about a complicated man.” The Odyssey. Trans. by Emily Wilson]

—

Tell me about a complicated man Iʻll tell you
about a woman with no choice but to stay
and stir and plan the man complex the clock
busying its hands the minutes in bed sleeping
stories untold who needs them play the rest
throw out the out of date weeks pass
she stays reads writes deepens her lines heʻs
gone out lives in his head lost something gold
sold heʻs got vision but heʻs lost the key
to the front door recognizes his children
when heʻs out and about hasnʻt formed
a strong opinion in the womb or out of it
passed various tests but couldnʻt could
didnʻt either itʻs not all negative or just
passive a fantasy she watches waits
is this who when is this where I began
where childhood ended I knew a man
not so complicated not so lost inside
himself adventure awaits or so we
are led to believe our local shop a world
I wonder a list of grocers tell me and
Iʻll tell you about a complicated man

It Could Have Happened

[“It could have happened” from “Could Have” in Wislawa Szymborska Poems New and Collected]

—

It could have happened if I hadn’t said anything.
I had a bad feeling. But thought for once make
a stand. She traveled south for an hour and I
didn’t know. Next thing word gets out. By then
I’d made my decision and things were never
the same. I was never one for control but is that
true? Maybe what I really mean is never
one for being out of control. And what I said
well forget it. What she heard was don’t come
when I don’t feel like it. So he felt like it.
And she felt like it. Hey there’s a pattern.
And today on social media I saw his face
how many years later? 53 years? What
am I on about? Oh yes. It could have.
But it didn’t. That’s the other side of every
crossroads, right? We go on our way
with no regrets. This is dangerously close
to what if. What if I’d gotten off the train
at Hiroshima. What if I hadn’t gotten drunk
that night in the orchard. What if I had slept
by myself that night at Butte Creek. That
night. How often under the cover of dark.
How often sex whiskey or a door left banging
in the wind. At the time the mythology
was creating itself while normal people
looked on. At the time the neighbors were
in bed and the streets were empty but
the vision of her in her nightgown out
in the streets under the amber lights or
the time she reached across from the passenger
side and clawed at my face don’t tell me
what we see is ourselves tell me it could
have happened otherwise if I had or

Dolphins At Nishimura

[“Why pretend to remember…” William Carlos Williams Kora in Hell: Improvisations XI]

—

Why pretend to remember if I learned how
to forgive myself I tried again and opened my
eyes is that cheating I know it slows down
the process if I’m really careful I’ll put it off
forever however when I looked up I saw them
again circling rising arching muscular
glistening from the sun behind me a steady circling
and guess what these are chronicles of now
here and I can’t say never written down but
it doesn’t matter this too shall pass itself
off as yet another relic useless except
to the painfully inquisitive the hungry insatiable
vestigial fingers I understand and hair somewhere
under a fin all else sacrificed to streamlining
no pockets which always struck me as remarkable
for where would I be without them I’ve always
carried something besides my own expanse of skin
what I do remember are the times I’ve forgotten
and the ensuing adventure called being locked out
or unable to pay my way or without means
to write anything down I do this for me you know
not that I don’t care about you it’s just that
all these years have worn off the edges
of responsibility nice and smooth lovely
to touch although that wasn’t the goal just
a soft outcome easy to handle and harmlessly
circling and circling in the waters hungry
to get my teeth into the flesh of remorse

What If Dark Matter

[“…what if dark matter is like space between people…” Tracy K Smith Life on Mars]

__

What if dark matter is like the space between people
intentions looking for a surface of pores to land
a desire melting fast like an ice cube liberated
spinning on the floor beneath you me or another
so soft unwritten disappearing in and out
of focus at least electricity strikes a light
there’s a reaction burning up like love or pain
these circles of life overlap each other I can’t feel
alone anymore my loss is less than shrinking thought
those things I once thought go on without me it’s not
so dark after all our perfect planets collide
or otherwise disrupt each other’s atmospheres
meanwhile another week passes unnoticed
it’s disconcerting is it exodus or migration
these runaway thoughts as if this were nothing
out of the ordinary as if we actually existed
but we died a minute ago everything rolled
tumbled in the gyres we’ll never know
the half of it I’m falling asleep fingertips
heavy on the keyboard I swear
yesterday you came alive for a moment

What’s Being Done That We’re Not Aware Of

[Prompt from Lehua Kawaikapuokalani FB post 8-21-20 (says 2d: the 19th?)]

—

What’s being done that we’re not aware of
what’s new in this what’s slow to fill
the glass that is your life okay I passed it
around waited for the morning breeze
was it that waiting that fell on my eyes was that
the heaviness that kept my feet on the ground
all the way to your place how many times
I look up and get a shock wow how did I
get here who was driving that’s a question
I reach inside find it’s not there I don’t know
who took it these days I think it might
have been me I listen for the sound of the motor
but nothing pulls up outside my door no one
comes these days there’s a distance that grows
inside everything near to me I bought the entire
inventory and didn’t open half of it what
can I do I’ve got tomorrow ahead of me
or so I like to think how can I keep opening
what I didn’t notice about the day before
yesterday the whole house vibrates
but it’s still not for me I can sit tight
clean out one drawer at a time the calendar
is empty and I’ve got nowhere to go so
much I don’t know about you about me I
keep waking up promising to pay attention
this time this minute look at the headlines

My First Marbles

[This is an 11 minute prompt response from the first line of Juliane Okot Bitek (2016) poem “Day 62” from Matthew Ogle’s Pome: poetry delivered daily via email]

—

Unless you believe in the eye of the needle
you wonʻt fit through the door to the next
thought whoever told you the mind is the sky
lied it’s not restricted to atmosphere or outer
layers first we learn to walk then we break
open the nest and later discover the night
learning it’s always there waiting outside
today’s weather patterns rain or shine wind
or the stillness that shrinks everything you’re
too small in the hour of rainfall one breath
you’re over the rooftop I’m talking to you
AKA myself who else? only this morning
remembering the perfect spheres of steel my father
brought home from Portishead the phosphate factory
the train to Bristol the teeth numbing vibrations
of ball bearings in his pocket my first marbles
rising above the dull horizon of linoleum
perfect orbs in his great hands set free
our reflections tumbling and rolling across
a floor busy with 50s faux and matchbox toys
detritus of childhood after the war when everyone
walked through everything that needed building
up again the sky hadn’t drawn open its curtain yet
I had to learn to walk before I saw constellations

White Ginger

if you were on the menu
would I ask the waitress
would she know I like it
sunny side up everything
on it to go or not to go
that’s the big question

Cleaning The Study

If I stare at the pair of gecko eggs tucked into the luggage tag that hung from a cabinet pull in my study if I stare long enough they’ll hatch perhaps I’ll even think of something to say something other than bon voyage or safe travels but I confess earlier I pictured tossing them into the fishpond to see if the bright koi of morning would reach up for these little pearls what a journey that would be for the little twins as fond as geckos as I most certainly am not for all their defecations from great heights all through the house I do admire their tenacity and when it comes to these eggs their ingenious nesting places imagine if you will the pregnant creature secreting herself behind the little plastic window where the name tag is inserted to lay between the layers — there were two name bearing rectangles there after all — mine and my deceased wife’s inserted more than three years ago because that’s how long it’s been — since she went anywhere or in a way everywhere — and then disgorged if that doesn’t sound too gross a way of saying it how does a gecko give birth quietly furtively defying gravity deftly neatly turning a luggage tag with rather nice Hawaiian or tropical design of monstera leaf on red background into a birth site two small packages of life if I allow it I can feel the power and responsibility gaining the upper hand as I write as I stare again knowing if I stare long enough these eggs will break open and new life will emerge blinking into a world without boundaries a world where even the rules are bare and pocketless quite bereft of any sort of baggage

Reaching Into The Light

I reach into the light 
to turn it off for one more hour 
but as it blooms bright
again and again I realize 
I could’ve had more
but it’s not like I’ll remember
what hasn’t even been said
even now in the dark words
squeeze life out of the page
there’s a flickering of faces and flowers
fires burning up the mountain slopes
chanting above the clouds outside
where would I be without outside
the wind racing through familiar branches
while the roots hold tight
it’s a long fierce breath
that runs ahead of the sun
my ears play tricks these days
it might be rain I might reach
into that light once more
set my feet on the floor
take a breath before I move
down the soft dark hall
to stand under the sky
where I can feel the embrace
of the well-traveled air
and hang this poem up to dry