The Barista

No one knows that behind the counter
she wears those flamenco dancing shoes
somewhere over the rainbow
with a puzzled look or Dame Fonteyn
biting back a smile
a white camelia between her teeth
they don't know but how could they
from their centipede line wiggling over
café interior threshold into the world
of parked cars trees still dripping
from this morning's showers

She moves in that rhythmic certainty
choreographed by orally transmitted
variations on the theme of coffee tea and
what else is there chocolate not too much
for him especially and no whip
but some like latté with a lot of froth
they smile they leave a chink of loose
change in the tall-necked vase
that takes pecuniary thanks for the dance

Now that one's calmed down a bit since
yesterday she's glad to see back only once
for the caffeinated measure the small poison
the small click of the heel the eyebrows
flickering the steam the twist of wrist
the tamping down of finely ground
a look over a shoulder the line
shuffling closer and with a shout
Americano! the head twists away
into the new world outside

The Work Of Hunters

—from a line in Frost's The Mending Wall

The work of hunters is never done they like to think
and thinking's never ending with their pursuits in mind
talking to older ones now reduced to staying home
weeding their small patch of greens
ones who see change a long way off
maybe pre-plantation days maybe ancient
family understandings and ways to read the signs
all creatures having their respective languages
roads they travel habits that can't be broken
habits that surprise us when they shift their
patterns the way pigs will fool you coming
at dawn one morning and dusk the next day
midst full moon one night or the rising of it
the next even a thin curved smile of a moon
some say will bring what's called the game
where do they sleep?
oh that will change with these nomadic types
where eat? well just look next time
and see how well they turn the soil
where it's good and wet
they're not after your prized roots
but those might pay
for a night of hunting worms
the hunter and the hunted changing roles you see
and here's a question why is it
we call hunters on the land by that name
but on the sea or shore it's fishermen
can you tell me that?
aren't they hunting
with their nets, spears, hooks and depth
finders, their maps on paper and too
those maps we can't see
like all hunters' stories told and held in the
constellations of their minds where it's
so dark only their grandfather's words
can guide them

The Deepening - For Todd

Layer upon layer sunrise and crackle
in that place between radio stations
smoke inversions early frosts or late
snows stealing almond blossoms from us
well we might ask is it we who change
or the haze coming over the world
with each new invention child eyes
seeing one part of the spectrum
the one we reserve for nostalgia
and by the time we turn around
the town doesn't recognize us like it used to
but the coffee shops improve with our aging
who is it exactly that changes certainly
we took note of the phenomenon called entropy
took note and threw it out cleared off the tables
sure the traffic calls out in a different key
an octave far below the familiar dogs
known to sleep through such vibrations
people in caves might notice a shift
that's how fleeting this life how thin the curtains
see how the breeze takes the fabric
and bends it to another older will
that's both out there and in here
where we know there's more than 5 senses
the other hand too the toes
no more counting
keep your geological grumblings
leave me with my ditch dirt
my glazes my pottery
all accidents born in the kiln

After Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish

Like ancient wallpaper peeling at the corners
pulling with it the patterns before it revealing
plaster in crumbs and crusted states and before that
the lath behind all, the ribcage itself hiding behind
what we thought was the true wall
that's how it went the time we spent in the old cottage
when the light would die and other older lights
would smoke up the corners of our eyes
and remind us that we weren't alone other souls
inheriting their place in history the unrecorded
stories the unnamed the voices
only a faint echo making us turn once or twice
to see who's there? Did you say something?
Did you hear that? To the point that we began
to wonder if we were merely finishing
someone else's sentences
left to wonder who will finish ours
as we recede into the dark
it's all around us now an emptiness
without structure without end
an entering and entering
always straining to hear

Gossamer

I don't know why but when I was a kid
it came to me in solitude alone away
from games and others the way we skated
over the world chasing and touching
hiding laughing skinning our knees
breaking the fabric that covered us
protected us then no it came to me

by myself the garden weedstalks
pebbles stones the whirring of winged
creatures shadows damp places
beneath or behind thorns the slow
movement of the brown hairy caterpillar
the mystery shrinking expanding
coming down from trees by summer's end
something lost more found others
released blown away like dandelion
seeds and it seems my quiet discoveries
made their gossamer way to you
I can see it in your eyes

The Head Of The Cabbage

The cabbage stared. Was that an iceberg lettuce over there on the other side of the cutting board—otherwise known as the chopping block? It was weird looking at your own green and leafy reflection in a knife blade the size of a hubcap—not that cabbages know much about cars. Now kings, on the other hand. Royalty and cabbage go a long way back.

I'll never forget my grandfather standing at the gate, the limp rabbit's hind legs caught up in one hand, its head and once-alert ears hung long, I reckon denied that last look at the cherished ground that provided shelter. No more the dark of the tunnels! Meanwhile, there nestled in grandad's other arm was a fine head of cabbage—also denied the rabbit—not your pale grocery section version but a deep rich green squeaky, tightly wrapping against itself head—no eyes there—no sight for the master of the vegetable world. Tight lipped across the field and through the last gate home, the four of us stepped carefully.

The Perfect Cut

There at the keen edge her eyes
split with nowhere to look
but either side when all along
it's the space between enticing her
that place of emptiness that fills
with her concentration and skill
as she brings her well-honed steel
into the decision to change beech
oak maple walnut doug fir or
mesquite into beams walls
windows openings closings floors
ceilings knowing full well how
taking away creates a full house
although few will ever know how
precision and exactitude
calibrate themselves in the heart
of the carpenter named Katie

Her Mirrors

Her mirrors know her witnesses
in that confluence of ghostly presences
and the two dimensional wall
of her perceptions

her book markers
know her collection of thumb prints
the well-read coterie of borrowers and
lenders the never-returned perusers

her windows understand only the sunset
the cheerful bruising of each day's fruitfall

the floor of her house the soles of all those
who passeth misunderstanding how they
came and went the vendors and the venters
only the former friendly enough to win her smile

her earrings the dancing moments fit within
the circles she so tightly drew
a nodding of the head
a shaking of disbelief
a rare laughter and the suffocating press
of the telephone with no way out
and there
there upon the old wall pictures of a life
not hers a child an aunt mysteriously
ensconced in Minnesota
the rest utter strangers

Remembering my Typewriter

Is that a typewriter I see before me?
Come let me press your space bar
with either thumb let me swing your
carriage to a new line hold down
shift and fly across QWERTY
ipsum capsicum and ampersand
without thinking fingertips resting only
on your home keys whilst pausing
twisting back your roller for earlier
impressions those lightning strikes
those keys the bones of your ancient
fan opening and closing take me
to the margins of possibility until
your ribbon runs quite dry oh my
tabulate tabulate return oh damn

Afternoon Dives Into An Empty Swimming

Afternoon dives into an empty swimming
pool and says ouch lies there crumpled
on the bottom and waits till 5:30 for gin
and tonic to come and fill things up
again I say I say the evening star is
out and so will I be pretty soon sings
the long dry spell between noon and
six the breath held the pinched
expression forgiven as the hours grope
towards the ladder and the 5 o'clock
shadow just had to find its way in
here eventually into this rambling
syntactical array of time passing
with its bouquet of unopened minutes

Your Tongue Along The Salt

Your tongue along the salt
your toe inside the fault
and everything between vibrations
mine at last—let not these moments
pass away I heard it said
I hear it now I lean on you
like a child against the bed's edge
eyes tight against the truth about angels

the mind I feel is too much with us
thinking and drifting out of sight
of land broken its truce with the shore
lost now on our own catamaran of love
too lost to hoist the sails against
the coming storm

It’s Very Difficult To Put Revenge Back In The Box

Bless me father it's been so long
I can't remember how the incense smells
how it curls like God's thoughts
toward the dark regions of His house
yes I'm on bended knee glad to see
you've installed cushioning
since I last paid my respects to mortal and venial
I'm at that place on the spectrum your holiness
your grace my grace is a little worn
so much to reveal and so little time
and all the while the undertow of illusion
and the geometric snare of rationality
like a calendar harmless enough its
gridlike inducements you can see
the marks here and here father all
the creatures I've killed in irritation
a sweep of the heel wiping out entire
armies all the vain blasphemy hurled
at cars parked too close or traffic
moving too slow and greed father
things I coveted including
my best friend's well
this is hard to say father
bottle of '67 Chateauneuf-du-Pape
that was painful for everyone
but worst of all I'm a purist
and I've lost count found love it's only
perverse curiosity that brings me
back here your face against the curtain
my reason for coming up in smoke
father, ten pushups won't work this time
I'm certain

No Trace

Last seen walking an isolated beach
at low tide on a remote island
in fact the eye witness may be
making it all up the way
she leaned into him their hands
loosely clasped their knees
lifting in certain mystic synchronicity
his trouser legs unrolled and wet
around the ankles feet immersed
in trembling shallow surf a zephyr pink
imbuing all even her white shift
wet too at the hem clinging
and all this just a moment just
an image in and out of focus
all the deciding and hesitating
long since given up and let go
what each brought in their way
lost now as history rewrites itself
and someone over here this side
behind our left shoulder says
it doesn't matter but there was
a coincidence I hear you say
an address in Chicago an aging aunt
en route to Santa Barbara
a garden with fireflies and a night
without traffic without urgency only
the pale undoing of corn in the kettle
meat searing and laughter never
talk of the throbbing aircraft their
endless migrations dropping fire afar
so much pain washed away
in this tide

Pearls Mean Tears

"Pearls mean tears." — Doris Lessing

Pearls mean tears she said
What do you mean he said
Are we talking Tahitian black
fat too pricey for the casual gift

unless a million may be said
casually and you can step over
a twenty dollar bill without
stooping to pick it up and so forth

or how about Japanese women
knives between their teeth
diving in only a twist of cloth
to great depths at great risk

I suppose there's lots to cry about there
No she said I mean Rembrandt
that room in the National Gallery
sounds of baroque those rough

imperfect pearls falling
into Trafalgar Square with flocks
of pigeons sent soaring each time
St. Martins-in-the-Fields' doors open

and the big canvas teasing
teasing all the experts how did
the master make the skin translucent
how did he capture the light

as if he placed one brushstroke
inside each shell of time
and tears grew there to bead up
in the corner of an eye

and fall in the second movement
or the third the lions stationary
unmoved guarding the monument
the one-armed one-eyed admiral

while inside the luster and sheen
the opacity cries out to be seen
long after the master himself
disappears from view

The Yellow Line

The Yellow Line

Grass grows down it
down the center line of this place
green tufts sprout from the faded ochre stripe
that separates our comings and goings it's
stretched out between us a cautionary tale
unwound from Pololu Lookout
all the way down Akoni Pule
and the rest of the story
running rings around our island
what else is left to say?

Days are even-handed too
alternating nicely with bed
pillow blanket and dreams without roads
cambered either side of the yellow

See how it clings to the black tarmac
by night shrinking by day expanding
cooling and warming up what we call
everyday existence as we rotate on our axis

You've seen no doubt the human nervous system
sans flesh and bones stretched out or better
an example our strands of DNA those spirals
laid out on the 3-D work surfaces of our imagination
since there's no table big enough
nor ether strong enough to keep us calm
as we consider how many times to the moon
and back the chemistry of information
will pierce its threads of phosphorous
hydrogen oxygen nitrogen and carbon

Well so it is with the yellow line
neither stop nor go this archetypal
agreement is older more primitive
pulled from the flames and mixed
with a little water for one long
one-handed daub

Without end Amen
not to mention other god-like attributes
such as fractal squinting
on all fours a familiar position
as we study the ancient art of stripe
as it travels over and percolates through
every pebble, stone, puka, bump, lump,
serration, aberration in the jagged world
of the diminutive not a straightforward proposition

After all we see a yellow line
and say there it is but there it is
rather more than that
more along the lines
no pun indented
of the infinite
something we really
really relate to and
adopt wholeheartedly
if not egotistically

It is the yellow line after all
that petrifies us truly scares us silly
notice how we jerk back
when we inadvertently drift across
its profound illumination yes
it's the line we drew that frightens
holds its power over us
something inside us
non-negotiable

But you know having set out like this
on my side of the sweet yellow line
I think it's worth saying we need
a bit more of this sort of thing
wouldn't you agree? That is
the ability to agree
silently without getting
in each other's way

This arrangement of the yellow line
single or double so simple
such low maintenance even
faded the truth of it is there
if not a little annoying entropically
(how annoying the fading of the line)
if we can do so much with so little
why don't we do so much that needs doing
so little bit more?

That's what I see
before me
when I see
a yellow line.

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