Güd wrtr

(North shore Kauai)

We think they’re donkeys,
but maybe they’re burros…
we don’t know, and we don’t care,

because I have a bag of small carrots
I’ve been saving for some four-hooved
animal across the road—from the mooing

pipi wahine (at least she sounds like a cow)
to the lio I have fed before, who gallop
across that field to meet me at

the barbed wire, eager for apples.
And today the hoki—a mama and baby—
come to the fence, their long ears

aimed at us like antennae, the baby
still nursing, not ready for carrots,
sniffing but not grasping,

though the mama’s soft muzzle
nuzzles my palm like a prayer,
her nostrils whuffing, her teeth

never grazing my hand,
happily crunching carrots,
every last one by one

by one.

•••

hoki: donkey
pipi wahine: cow
lio: horse

Perhaps I make up a tiny bit
for pocketing the occasional
heart-shaped piece of coral

or smooth fingernail of shell
when, at the high tide line, I spy
sharp-edged pieces twined

in ocean detritus. Then I stop,
bend, pick up the microplastics
that should never find their way

to the ocean, but do, many
collecting in the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch, an area of free-

floating detritus twice the size
of Texas. It is a small thing
to retrieve bits of bright green

and blue that may, in a previous
incarnation, been of some use
to humans—even more satisfying

to pick up a stray lens cap or shoe
sole or tangled fishing line.
But then, I think, what happens

to these bits of trash that I put
in today’s garbage? How much
of it migrates back to the ocean,

consumed by unsuspecting marine
creatures, some snared in ghost
nets, before more of these small

bits float their way to shores
all over the world, some of it,
no doubt, back to this

cherished stretch of sand?

from the time I shuck my flip-flops
at the end of the path till I return.

God’s a terrific listener, she of the many
gods and goddesses who bless

these islands—the divine, the universe,
the beloved, great spirit, ke akua—

she of cooling breezes that accompany
my every step over softest sand—

Mahalo for the excellent beach, God.
Always perfect in every weather.

And since I have no immediate worries
with which to pester her, cruising as I am

through paradise and all, I’ll sometimes make
a request just to see if she’s paying attention—

Maybe one intact cowrie?—and holy moly,
if within ten steps one doesn’t appear

among the detritus of coral bits and
shell parts, its rounded brown back

a mini version of the honu who call these
waters home. Mahalo! I call to the sky,

hoping she’s still listening, which, of course,
she is. And as I gawk at the crazy high

winter waves rearing up like horses
all agitated and white-foamy, before

galloping their way to swamp the sand,
I say, Rockin’ amazing sea today, God.

And there, tilting shoreward in the milky
blue waves, she aims her big old divine

laser pointer toward three large brown
discs just below the surface—great

sea turtles surfing the big swells like it’s
no big deal, diving to nibble some tasty limu.

Onetwothreefourfive honu—wow, God!—
And as I turn to walk back from whence

I came—fourfivesixseveneight turtles
bouncing around—nineteneleventwelve.

And lookie there, God! (as if she doesn’t
know this): one hauled-out honu high

up on the soft sand, its humpy shell
drying to a gentle pony brown, eyes

closed, taking a snooze. Where’d she
come from? She wasn’t there a few

minutes ago when I walked by.
Nice one, God, I think so as not to

startle one of her finer incarnations.
Sleep well, big girl, I whisper, walking

by at a respectful distance. I smile
as one great eye opens and a blessing

of light raindrops falls upon us—
Mahalo, honey, I will—

just to say that, of course,
she got the message.

(for Dickie)

It may be like writing in white ink on a white page—
love returned, invisible, predictable, some might say—

but here’s to the old love, the long love,
the no-one-thought-it-would-last love,

the paradox of the I-can’t-stand-you-right-now
love, the please-be-quiet love, but then,

later, let me enumerate the hundred tiny
things I love about you, even when you’re

driving me crazy—and no, this is not about
your driving—this is about the innumerable

small kindnesses you put in my hands,
the hours spent working hard to serve me

better, and how I do the same for you, this
drama-free reciprocal love, this level of

contentment that so many wish for,
satiated, happy, convinced that we made

a good choice long ago—you, the one I
return to again and again, and you to me,

this imperfect, long-term bilateral association,
love bestowed and conveyed, thankfully,

blessedly requited, as all love should be.

(Haena Beach Park / Tunnels Beach, north shore Kauai)

“See that stretch of beach there?”
Dick says as we drive by. “That little cove?”
I nod.

“One time I was here—must’ve been 40 years ago—
I drove up here by myself, and right there, on that beach,
I saw a rainbow way out over the ocean. It was getting
to be sunset, and I had an hour’s drive back to where
I was staying, but I parked and got out of the car.
And there, down at the edge of that beach,
was a horse tethered, munching on some grass.

“I stood on the road above the beach and made
only two frames, shooting Kodachrome,
and left, hoping I’d gotten a decent shot.
But it turned out they were both way overexposed.
In those days you couldn’t save ’em.”

I hear the regret in his voice as we make the short
trip back to our cottage very near that cove.
Though we’ve often seen horses munching on tufts
of green here, neither of us recalls seeing horses
on this stretch of sand in decades of visits.

We lie down for a little rest before sunset,
though not for long. Dick rises to head to
the beach to check out the sunset.

You never know: Some nights it’s fantastic;
some nights it’s just OK. But even when it’s just OK,
it’s pretty fabulous—the mountains jaggedly
stair-stepping to the sea, punctuated at the end
by triangular Mount Makana.

Dick heads out on foot while I sit this one out.
He comes back, sweaty and excited, with a story:

“I walk out there and there’s a not bad sunset,
which I’m shooting, when I turn around to see
two horses and riders coming toward me
on the sand, near the water’s edge, a black dog
running around them. I back up higher on the beach
to give them space. When they get to the flat point
in the sand that curves around the beach, they stop
and slowly walk the horses into the surf
up to their ankles.

“I watch, hoping they’d go far enough to get
Makana and the sunset behind them, and,
after the dog has fun in the water, gradually
they continue down the shore.”

We look at the photos now on his computer:
Silhouetted riders and horses perfectly positioned,
one with an artistically bent foreleg bent,
the dog running ahead, Makana’s dark triangle
against a not-bad sunset,

another gift of synchronicity on
another kickin’ day in paradise.

I’m always glad when I read your notes to the world.
—Julie Woodside

That’s what they are?
These little spit-up poems

that show up daily now,
arriving with so little effort

they can hardly be called
proper poems—not labored

over or crafted over days
or weeks or months,

as so many proper poets do.
If you say it’s a poem,

it’s a poem, I told students
for years. But they’re also

love notes to the world,
mostly unnoticed except by

those who need to find them—
like coral hearts that catch

the eye on a beach. Rough,
unrefined, a metaphor

of heart, a little love poem
from the sea right there

that you didn’t ask for
or expect.

But look at that—the gift
appeared for you. Don’t

hesitate to pick it up and
voice a thank you into

the always-there-for-you
air.

•••

(Thank you, Julie Woodside, for the kind comment and prompt!)

For Nell Lester,
Feb. 5, 1930–Dec. 3, 2023

and for Sue Lester,
best daughter
•••

A hui hou—
until we meet again—
people say in Hawaii,

perhaps with a kiss on
the cheek
when they part—

a hui hou
at the end of a life,
as the mourning dove

lands on a tiki
named Pau Hana
(work is done),

as we say to you,
mahalo nui loa
for your many

kindnesses,
aloha oe,
one fond embrace

until we meet again.

(North shore, Kauai)

All day we circle the base
of the thousand-foot triangular
peak at the end of the road—

the gift called Makana—
as we recognize its Bali Hai silhouette
from the distance of Makua Beach,

and, later, under its majestic shadow
as our feet traverse thousand-year-old
terraced taro patches at Limahuli.

On nearby Ke’e Beach a young woman
in a black bikini presents me with
a perfect cone shell she’s found at

the shoreline, an unexpected offering
of aloha not far from the spot where,
at sunset, we tiptoe past a young

monk seal on cooling sands
curled around a log nearly its size—
as if sleeping next to a brother—

as crickets begin their lullaby,
and night nestles in, and
the great mountain stands

its forever vigil over it all.

The sky looks as if it’s trying to make up its mind
between spitting drops or tossing out a bit of weak

sunshine on the first morning of the year’s last
month. In this place it will likely do a bit of both

where the jungle meets the sea, on a small
island in a necklace of land bits that stretches

northward for more than a thousand miles,
inhabited mostly by things that fly or crawl.

But I will pull on clothes and head down
the path, leave my flipflops above the high tide

line, and let my feet sink into the comforting
cushion of billions of grains of seastuff

wave-pummeled and landed here—
this spot where land morphs into ocean

inseparable to the flying ones who
do not distinguish shore from surf,

solid from liquid, who soar over it all,
this point where everything becomes one.

(On the road circling Hanalei Bay, Kauai)

Saw a guy on the side
of the road, waxing his
stick, right out in public.

They do that here.
“Sexwax,” Dick said,
as we drove by,

sounding like the
famous surfer who
bears the same name,

though Dick has never
in his five-and-a-half
decades of traveling

to these islands set
foot on a board. Later
that day we saw some

in a shop: Mr. Zog’s
Original Sexwax,
a surfer’s favorite,

a warm water wax
with its ear-catching
name. And we thought

of that surfer on the side
of the road, likely antsy
to hit soft sand leading

to the water, patiently
cross-hatching and circling
wax atop his stick where

his feet will be, with luck,
helping his toes grip when
he drops in on his first

gnarly wave of the day
and rides it as far as it goes
with a heart-racing grin.

Then he’ll kick out,
smoothly turning back
over the top of the wave,

take a seat on his
freshly waxed board
to relish his run

before, belly down,
paddling back out
beyond the break,

ready to do it again.