Category Archives: Uncategorized

Moving chickens in the dark

First, resist the urge for light. Step from memory across the grassto the henhouse where the girls sleepon their perches as if they’ve downeda few strawberry margaritas. Tiptoe as you move close to a snoring hen.Pin her wings gently to … Continue reading

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Trimming the palms

He’s 30 feet up, a spikeon the bottom of each bootplunged into the slendertrunk curving toward the ocean, a yellow umbilicalcord around his middlebinding him to thiselder statesman. A slender U, the treetrimmer bends like a bow,intently studying, like anygood … Continue reading

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Radiant attention

There are two worlds: the world that we can measure with line and rule,and the world we feel with our hearts and imagination. —Leigh Hunt ••• In this place,this new place, not new at all,not even to you who have … Continue reading

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We become poets

We lose the people we love we become poets. We fight battlesno one knows about, we use the blood to write poetry. —“Loss,” Xara Hlupekile, Malawian poet ••• You see these hands, the ones attachedto the ends of your wrists? … Continue reading

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Let sleeping honu lie

(Poipu Beach, Kauai) Late afternoons they lumberout of the sea, their powerfulfront legs leaving tire tracks in the soft sand, to heavethemselves up and out of theirworld into ours for a time. Fifty, seventy, eighty greensea turtles will arrive oneby … Continue reading

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Exceptional banyan

(Lihue, Kauai) There’s no way to know how bigit was, how many slender trunkstwined themselves together, a massive aerial root systemsending strands of itself earthwardto prop up what became George Wilcox’s exceptionalbanyan. Almost 130 years afterhe planted what must have … Continue reading

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Kalapaki

Know this curve of bay well.Walked it, swam it, dug my feet into its sandy slope so many timesit feels like one of the elements of this island that have seepedinto me. Surely, my blood must be half seawater by … Continue reading

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How I want to fix what’s befallen you

Though I can’t—I know that—you all tucked up into a grief-ful,rage-ful ball. Or maybe you’re onyour feet, pacing or overflowing. I get that. But I’m a tinkerer of sorts.I want to pull out my little toolboxwith special devices that mightmake … Continue reading

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The morning after

The little tube of a pillowthat props up my armdisappeared before I made it to bed deepinto the morning after,and, in the dark, groping for its familiarshape, I could notfind it. Gave up. Finally fell asleepand awoke a few hourslater, … Continue reading

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Time change

Two days after we fall back,my little atomic clock by the bed has not,stubbornly clinging to the savingtime that yields more light. I have to set it on the windowsillas it waits—like E.T.—scanning the skiesfor the right craft to wander … Continue reading

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