1.
During the day, when darkness gathers in the shade
and waits for the sun to wane
between clefted rock and fan palm shadowplay
spilling like an ink over the forest floor,
there is a filling in the cracks
the way the pen interacts
with light and dark to facilitate the change.
The light that is shapeshifting from view,
tempers the fade with a golden hue,
arresting for what seemed an eternity
in the ebb and flow of the afternoon.
2.
In the labyrinth of dim-lit paths and somber corners,
the myth of Kahalaopuna permeates.
From the highest reaches of thought
from ridge lines shaped into a profile,
it spreads over a solemn ramble
between the cathedral rows
of red bark and flickering candle.
The mottled rays
strewn and stained beneath the canopy,
lends an ambient glare
to the incense that hangs in the air
with a hint of Eucalyptus.
The notes of a passing stream
snaking between the variations of quiet.
Light and shadow, sound and echo,
a white-tipped thrush
brushes the dark with sudden communication
fluttering from limb to limb
until the last of its sound
gets lost in the silent film,
muffled in the dense coils of Banyans.
3.
When the forest is an internal state,
every step is a thought
every left lends fabric to the dream
of the self that fills the space
between darkness and the birth of words
between rockfall and the scars of collision
between the origin of mystery and the orator’s revision.
A swarth of light brings a reprieve
from the weight of time and entrenched belief.
With the rain a renewal,
as paths switchback towards a view
of a knife’s edge over the void
on which you ascend, as if on a thread,
returning to that of substance again.
4.
Myth, from a hidden source in the jagged cliff,
would course through grooves of rock and softened earth.
Like a lifeblood for the roots,
nourishing the pursuit of the past
in cool heights and shimmering pools.
The wind scattered patterns of leaves,
plaited wrinkles on the sylvan streams,
whispering from behind the chaos of the falls
a rhythm in ceaseless shhhhhh,
a gaze in vertical awe
where the light retreats , the waters fall
from the mossy contours, from a stoic face
that will not betray the location of burial caves
nor their processions.
By singing shell and sacred moon,
by torch and by trail,
they’ll pass through Aihualama,
through cottages of the plantation era,
even Tudor mansions
offer no obstruction,
as the past and the present is bridged
by a moment’s reconstruction
luminous in the darkness of time
is the light of memory.
yakskinpocketnotes 