While under the effects of treatment,
it may have been a hallucination.
The sudden visitation of wind to the courtyard,
with just a hint of ocean breeze
can be a reprieve
from the prison of blinking machines.
A transfixed gaze now shifts
to the lone Hibiscus flower
that draws him in
while the others droop and nod for the hour.
From its corner it opened like a portal,
a chamber, delicate, tropical,
the possibility of return unfolding
from out of the drab rock walls
that in this heightened state seem to fall away.
Recalling the stark black and sharp edged
volcanic stacks of heiau on Oahu,
he suddenly smells the bouquet of fallen fruit,
or perhaps their decay,
overwhelming the noxious odor
of burnt cafeteria food.
The sweat on his brow is transformed
to the gentle touch of a passing rain.
The kaleidoscope in his brain
that distorts vision,
becomes a back valley rainbow’s incision
of color through the clouds.
Thoughts that hover in the depths,
now lift to the peaks
light as feathers
luminous as the wings of swallows
dancing like transparent slippers across the sky.
Thoughts that endure winter,
just hang in there, freedom’s at the end of its thaw.
In the rumor of water and evening tide,
you’ll drift on a stranded moon
into the shadow of a dead volcano,
with the specter of diagnosis,
a reverberating echo.
All these arteries lead to the sea.
On the arc of a wave somewhere
an endless moment appeals for integration,
a loosened response more dreamlike
than narcotic rumination,
for death is not the end of illumination,
though I have watched light leaving the face
of a darkened sea,
slipping towards the threshold
of the horizon’s furthest journey.
Awash in the current and gone,
he is wheeled away into the new dawn
fading into the intercom.
A not so subtle intrusion of reality,
becomes a reminder of one’s mortality.
Yet a lasting image remains in full array
through the mental hallways,
this brilliant flower of transformation,
ushering in the recognition that all living things
must open, for it is but a brief window of time,
before it closes once again.
yakskinpocketnotes 