Flowers love Hawaii
Flowers love Hawaii
as the warm wind loves the sea.
As immigrants, they flourish
in the air and soil so rich
with urgent promises
so intimate with orchids.
Here bougainvillea paints
the highways, hills and homes
asserting riotous dominance
on mere decor.
So friendship loves Hawaii
in the easy island sun,
and finds its roots
and blossoms loudly,
unreservedly, upon
the fertile memories of the land.
Maui Horizontal
This is a land of horizontals
(palm trees notwithstanding)
flat as spindrift
off the reef wave
or long, tonsure clouds
across the sleeping hills.
We who would be vertical
and stand
with royal palms
or breaching whales,
must acquiesce
to forces sideways bent —
the wind and water worlds
that here hold consequence
for juvenile exuberance
and pride.
The poolside loungers
call surrender first,
as do the shaded beaches
in the midday always-
happy hour.
Circular Passage
On a Maui morning skyline
the humpback whales erupt
in geysers of turbulent white
splashed on purple
channel haze.
Something from the farthest depths
wants upward, air
and you.
Something gone a million
years and more from land
wants back in huge
omnipotence,
and thrusts, leviathan,
its bulk
above the water world
to breach defiant
in the wind, and crash
upon the waves,
in fierce surrender
to the air.
Though this is a time
for calving and growth,
there is this breaching
and consort flaunting
of massive seven-ton
boxcar bodies
in a great strutting-of-stuff
for the ladies
more concerned with
the feeding of young.
This is a trimming down
and sloughing off time
before an urgency
demands the start
of a great Pacific journey
on the North Pacific current
to reap the Bering Sea.
Until engorged and sated,
filled again, restored,
the calving time at Maui
calls across 3000 miles.
What then wishes to be born
wants sheltered warmth
after the frozen world,
and I, a watcher awed
on this far shore know well
the craving of peace,
have travelled countless miles
and angry years
to find.
Collectives of Birds
An impertinence of doves
struts in from patios
quite unabashed, to search
my carpets for
forgotten crumbs and seeds.
An insistence of cardinals
demands our attention
from palm and bougainvillea
proclaiming their dominion
over bugs.
A tentative of prim,
schoolgirl Madelaine ducks
mince by behind
Sister Superior Quack
from the quiet convent stream
beyond another world
next door.
An opportunity of egrets
flaps and leaps and floats
in front, beside, around
the clattering mower blades
to snatch the frenzied insects
stirred aloft.
And after all,
an overwhelm of sunset cloud
draws softly down
the closing conch shell
notes to island days.