When I ask, you smile
and agree, every time,
as I present the top
of my right hand,
and you don your
close-up glasses,
take manicure
scissors in hand,
and snip the oddly
long hair growing
from the center
of that hand that
has stroked your
head and loved you
in so many ways
for so very long.
Sure, the temp’s in the mid-40s, but
it’s sunny in Sacramento this fine morning,
and we’re into something good,
singing along with Herman’s Hermits—
the five of us exercising with Shelley
this morning on Marilyn’s driveway—
Something tells me I’m into
something good.
I cannot help but sing along;
I learned every word when I was 11
and my best friend Suz discovered
Herman’s Hermits a few years after
they became part of the American
rock’n’roll scene, thanks to the British
invasion of the musical kind. We
adored those four mop-top guys
whose voices floated out of the record
player in a house in Granite Bay,
California, singing a song written by
Carole King and Gerry Goffin,
later swooning over “Tapestry” when
Carole sang, My life is such a tapestry
of rich and royal hue, an ever-changing
vision of the ever-changing view.
And, oh, the view on this blue sky
day, as Marilyn, bundled in black,
walks out of her house to join us,
upright and ready for exercise,
looking good as she recovers from
her stroke, lifting pink hand weights
up, down, overhead, behind,
following Shelley as we all do,
our hearts rising on a brisk, almost-
winter day into something good,
so, so good to be together
again.
The morning after we land,
as I maneuver onto the freeway,
head east to the place where I was raised,
I am stunned to see more cars coming at me
then all the vehicles on the small island
where we just spent three tropical weeks.
It has been ever thus on every return
to the place I call home—a slight hitch
in the get-along on re-entry day,
the herky-jerky of where am I again?
mixed with glad to be back,
multiplied by a little sad to leave the place
I’ve just been.
We are odd creatures, we humans,
never quite satisfied with where we are
in space, in time, often longing for
a remembered space-time that cannot
come again. It never can.
But oh, those embedded space-times
lodge deep in our bones, take up their
own space in our cells, infusing us
with something humans call memory,
but the gods know as joy space,
as love buds, as heart crumbs,
the glory in our own back yard
always available to us, even if, down
the road, we forget some or even all
of the details.
(Hanalei town, north shore, Kauai)
Ten miles of repainting double yellow
lines punctuated with reflective squares
on each side will take three weeks,
so the flashing road signs indicate.
And when we see the crew
painstakingly lining the rural road
through Hanalei, we understand why.
In our freeway-filled world, huge
machines do this work in hours,
but here, it’s two hard-hatted men
operating a much simpler unit, guiding
it down the center of the road like
a horse-drawn plow, while other
hands apply chalk far ahead of them
to indicate where the lines must go.
Then another couple of workers
follow the line-makers and affix
ornaments guaranteed to glow
at night like protective fireflies
paired on either side of the fresh
yellow lines. This afternoon,
pau hana, after the road crew’s
departure, we pull off the road,
pause to admire the day’s progress,
this stretch of newly decorated
asphalt where patient, artistic
hands have been hard at work,
and where, tomorrow, they’ll
pick it up again.
(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!)
Güd wrtr 