Güd wrtr

First, resist the urge for light.

Step from memory across the grass
to the henhouse where the girls sleep
on their perches as if they’ve downed
a few strawberry margaritas.

Tiptoe as you move close to a snoring hen.
Pin her wings gently to her sides,
picking up her fluffy self that weighs
next to nothing, as you shift
her from one perch to another.

Chickens can’t see in the dark.

You’ve been taught to fear what you can’t see,
but darkness doesn’t always mean danger.

Look up—stars populate
the heavens, even when they seem absent.
Meteors streak the night with their
momentary brilliance.

Once relocated, a sleepy hen might squawk
but will soon settle into her new spot.
Before the next sundown she will
return to her new indentation, one
she will recognize by smell, by feel,

settling into the imprint that is hers
where, before rising, she will nest
a pearlescent oval gift for you,
slick and gleaming,
radiant in this new day.

He’s 30 feet up, a spike
on the bottom of each boot
plunged into the slender
trunk curving toward

the ocean, a yellow umbilical
cord around his middle
binding him to this
elder statesman.

A slender U, the tree
trimmer bends like a bow,
intently studying, like any
good sculptor, what needs

to be removed to reveal
the essence of palm.
The coconuts must go,
of course, this being

a public area where
clueless tourists wander.
At any moment clumps
of perfectly good nuts

can fall with a whump!
to the grass below. I
watch from a respectful
distance, my neck craned,

as the sculptor releases
a frond, then the machete,
which bounces, then dangles
from a rope around

his waist like a forgotten
appendage. How must
it feel to shape a living
being at such a height?

How to know what to
take and what to leave?
What does it mean
to spend years in

such precarious
circumstances, caring
for long-lived elders,
keeping them tidy,

checking to make
sure that they have
what they need—
at least for now?

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 immersed
yourself in its loveliness

time and again, you sit
in the dark listening to

a new day germinating
outside the window,

seeping in like the gradual
light beginning to transform

the black jungle outside into
one-hundred-forty-two shades

of green, wildness touching
the edges of humanity where

roosters emphatically announce
the day amid doves’ gentle coos

dit-dit, dit-dit-dit-ing and

competing with the insistent
tweets of birds you can’t see.

The daily predawn counterpoint
swirls overhead as early traffic

swooshes by, not unlike waves
smashing into the sea wall

across the road, which you
cannot hear for all the wingéd

racket drenching your ears,
pulling you into a day in this

world that feels like home,
though it will never be

truly yours—you visitor
on this earth that bore you

and has borne you, giving
your radiant attention to music

created in this moment that,
like a good jazz solo,

will never sound precisely
this way again.

•••

With thanks to poet Marie Howe for an inspiring master class on Kauai.

We lose the people we love we become poets. We fight battles
no one knows about, we use the blood to write poetry.

—“Loss,” Xara Hlupekile, Malawian poet

•••

You see these hands, the ones attached
to the ends of your wrists?

Here are mine. And over there, hers.
And a ways away, his. Oh, and look—

there’s theirs, too. Each pair as unique
as a wave curl before it collapses,

salty, spent and foamy, at our feet. We lose
what we love. We lose those we love.

We lose. But turn these palms up to face
our faces, and look—your creases contain

the universe; they are made from starstuff.
Our lifelines hold radiant energy, the very

electromagnetic waves that have traveled
through space. That’s light embodied

in our palms, transmitted through fingers,
appearing as letters that each of us

can turn into words, into lines, into poems.
We are all poets/dancers/painters/lovers

studded with consciousness, embedded with
kindness. We hold mystic chords of memory,

as Lincoln said, the better angels of our nature.
And as we fight battles only we can see,

let our very blood bubbling with words
write poems that only we can scribe

onto our little patch of earth where each
of us walks or wheels or stumbles or

is carried. Truly, we are all carried.
As the river is carried, as birds are, aloft.

Look—I see the whole Earth cradled
in your palm. You hold the planet

as the Earth holds the One,
which is EveryOne.

Which is you, every you.
Which is me, every me.

(Poipu Beach, Kauai)

Late afternoons they lumber
out of the sea, their powerful
front legs leaving tire tracks

in the soft sand, to heave
themselves up and out of their
world into ours for a time.

Fifty, seventy, eighty green
sea turtles will arrive one
by one, these solitary

marine reptiles sleeping in
silence, a landed flotilla basking
in companionable proximity—

the 50th state the only place
in the world where honu
do this. No one knows why.

That mystery is what draws
people like us to the beach
before the sun makes its

descent. Hundreds of humans
standing a respectful distance
from boulder-sized beings

terribly hampered by gravity
and weight on land, so graceful
in the sea—the very picture

of peace, as are we gathered
in a giant arc around them,
gentled by the sight of such

compatibility, not a shred
of conflict among the throng,
only wonderment, as we

gaze at them with the fondness
of parents looking at sleeping
babies, as we wait for the day’s

last light to slowly disappear,
so that we, too, can eventually
make our way to our rest.

Know this curve of bay well.
Walked it, swam it, dug my feet

into its sandy slope so many times
it feels like one of the elements

of this island that have seeped
into me. Surely, my blood must

be half seawater by now. And,
just arrived again, he and I

sit under the sheltering arms
of a welcoming tree whose

name I once knew. Now I
do not. There are so many

things I do not know, I realize,
after collecting a lifetime’s

knowledge. Like how some
of us choose the more hateful

path, and some of us lean
into love with a heartiness

that, well, heartens my heart.
Him there, he heartens my

heart, the one with whom
I look out on ocean that

calls me, soothes me,
reminds me that, as Rick

told Ilsa, my fears don’t
amount to a hill of beans

in this crazy world. But
if you’ve got someone

to sit with and do nothing
but look at ocean waves

gentle themselves into
shore, you’ve got a winner

there, someone with whom
you can ride out the crazy,

who will remind you of
your infinitesimal place

in the world, and of the
greater-than-great space

that you happily occupy
in his equally huge heart.

Though I can’t—I know that—
you all tucked up into a grief-ful,
rage-ful ball. Or maybe you’re on
your feet, pacing or overflowing.

I get that. But I’m a tinkerer of sorts.
I want to pull out my little toolbox
with special devices that might
make it more better,
as my sister and I used to say.

Look—this doohickey fits into
that jagged spot in you, the one where,
yes, the light gets in, but you’re not
wanting that squinty brightness—
the jarring, painful, oh-shit realization
that this is a moment after which things
will never be the same.

And I’m right there with you.

But here, I’ve got this whatsit in
the toolbox that, if you hold the handle
just so, may help walk you to a spot where—
though you may not believe this—
if you open your half-shut eyes
and draw in a deep breath,

you’ll take in the tang of trees turning,
their greening done, preparing for
the let-go. Look. Imbibe their sturdiness,
their whatever-comes-their way-ness,
in this falling time. Isn’t that something?

Let me stand with you as you take all this in.

Honestly, I don’t have much in my toolbox
except these funny devices and two stubby
pencils and a small box of watercolors
with a wee brush. And oh, here are some
scraps of paper I made from pulp and slurry.
Perhaps you might adorn them with color
or words or both—maybe some fallen leaves—
whatever lands on the page.

I know that it’s far from substantial,
and none of this may help. But here’s
one more flimsy thing:

my own trembling hand, which I’m
offering to one of yours, perhaps
the best tool ever, especially when
two of them come together
palm to palm,

even—no, especially—
at a time like this.

The little tube of a pillow
that props up my arm
disappeared before

I made it to bed deep
into the morning after,
and, in the dark,

groping for its familiar
shape, I could not
find it. Gave up.

Finally fell asleep
and awoke a few hours
later, sore-shouldered,

bewildered. When I
finally rose into the day,
opening the blinds,

looking into the illuminated
back yard where two
birds in the sycamore

rested, eyes closed,
I saw the little lozenge of
a pillow, nested behind

the large propping-up
wedge. How it got there
I have no idea.

But I grabbed it, hugged
its squishy shape and
tucked it back where

I’ll find it tonight.
Comfort exists. Love
has not disappeared,

even if it might seem
to hide. You are still
out there. I am still

in here. There is
more us
than we may think.

Two days after we fall back,
my little atomic clock by the bed has not,
stubbornly clinging to the saving
time that yields more light.

I have to set it on the windowsill
as it waits—like E.T.—scanning the skies
for the right craft to wander overhead
and connect. Then it will change.

If I try to force it back an hour,
it revolts, shifts back to the time
it’s known for six months,
reluctant to shove into the darkening,
these two months leading to
the winter solstice—

after which, we, like the sky,
begin to brighten a bit
more each day.