The Wind at the end

There was a wind

that begins with suspicion

and by the end

turns a whole valley black .

It passes through the realm of sleep

whispering through

the grasses of a past

that couldn’t be kept underneath.

Like a subtle stirring

in the sea before

the approaching

hurricane turns

the peace and sanctity

to waves of heat

breathing deeply through the trees.

Before there was fire there was fear

and it seared itself into consciousness,

it was insatiable, inescapable.

Dry tinder cracks the hills

and exposed cinder

scratched an inferno

from the billowing smoke

blackening the skies.

It reached the fear lines

on the edges of community,

a vestige of safety

if there was only time.

This wind that sets the blaze,

that uncaged the phoenix

to fly unobstructed

torching everything in its wake.

Tongues of fire

speak through a riot of color,

exploding from under

the once coastal quiet

that becomes unnaturally vacant.

In a swarth of red dirt and anger

that grasps and spreads like a fever,

confusion reigned

and in the calamity

comes the realization that all is gone

as if wiped from memory.

We’re caught in cycles

of endless media scrutiny,

a cacophony of lies where

the opportunistic, disguised as relief,

know the future is malleable and undefined.

Once the dust settles

and the millions of eyes

now fixed on the wildfire

inevitably look away,

the pressure is applied.

2.

I’m wrested awake

as the wind grows in intensity.

The kakea of Manoa,

born out of craters,

let loose from fissures

and overflowing borders.

It runs through the chimes

making curtains into tides,

great gusts of violence

pressed against the silence

prying all sound not held in place.

The scattering of leaves joins

the vagrant scraping of pavement.

Like a deranged rainbow

that flashed across the valley,

this arc diving into the sea,

only to come back around relentlessly.

I wasn’t aware

that this shared wind between islands

carried death on its other end.

Its howling a hallmark

of the recent insomnia,

where the jarring of sirens

brought luminous reflections

to the kitchen windows

like a colorful portal

into the collective pain,

a historic pattern of

old wounds opening

a sleepless suspicion

that it will take everything in the end.

This wind is no longer

in the hands of those

who were born here,

who know the scent as

it runs through the grasses

like an incense in the sacred places.

Now there is only mourning

and burnt out endings,

everything swept into the aftermath

of questionable decisions.

Is there disaster capital

in the passage of wind that

erases everything ?

From where will come the revision?

The old banyan, deeply rooted ,

smolders in ash at its base,

yet still shows glimmers of life,

still holds tightly a community’s dreams.

In the deep reaches of its branches,

in the gentle sway

and rhythmic dances

with the trades the

leaves are no longer blackened

you imagine

once the waking nightmare ends

no longer shriveled by death

and the fate of this place

can be determined again by

those within the reach

of her familiar breath.

It is this wind

that will pick everything up again.

In the Aftermath of Storms

In the aftermath of storms

there is the longing to unravel illusions,

to decipher the necessity of distance,

that invisible enemy between us.

Freed from the confinement of ceilings,

where the heaving chest of the night

was a heavy wind bearing down on the windows

and rooftops like a red phoenix unfurled

in the imagination.

Highlighted by lightning, it undergoes a rebirth.

The needle point of the Hongwanji Temple

was plugged directly into the sky,

harnessing the weather, grounding the energy,

scattering leaves to run marathons

all night through the empty streets.

Nothing bends to the will of nature like the trees.

Shaking free of what is unnecessary,

you’re left with the essence and the spirit.

In the aftermath we can verify

that the riots that leave debris

weren’t merely an aspect of sleep.

Through the kaleidoscope of canopies

we see the sky is no longer in tatters.

Limbs stretched and battered,

still stand rooted to resistance.

All through the storm we cling to our positions,

like A’ama crabs to the black rocks of heavy restrictions.

They’ll insist we go nowhere until the next wave passes.

Gripped and transfixed by satellite images,

those slow moving monsters drawing near to tiny islands.

Dwarfed by the unconscious,

we’ll look to the deep to justify the fear.

In the aftermath everything is eerily quiet.

Real or imagined, the scars on the land are evident,

even the incoherent ramblings

of those who sleep in doorways

have taken their grievances elsewhere.

No cars on the road, though the gas stations never closed,

no stoplights to slow the ride straight through to Chinatown.

Looking among the markets and the overturned fruit,

following the scent of jasmine incense in the pursuit

of something material, something alive.

The once bustling city is now like a fish on ice.

The harbor ships, anchored and tied down.

Silent are the masts above gang planks

where no congregation awaits.

It’s a landscape of closed gates,

a vacant wasteland of boarded shopfronts.

In the aftermath there’s a longing

for the lively din of a cafe.

To sit and eavesdrop

on the espresso pounding words into type,

breathing life into the spaces

dominated by the headlines

if only to defy and cut through the lies between us.

They say the storm just missed us,

minimal damage but there will be another,

there’s always another excuse to shelter

and from each other maintain the distance.

Down by the shoreline the ocean offers no resistance.

Passing its amorphous border

to become absorbed in something larger

than discordant thoughts.

A suspension of will

to an entity no longer paternal,

it never insisted it was protecting.

In the aftermath of being besieged,

it is ironically the sea,

once seen as the source of the calamity,

that now brings a sense of serenity.

The sea exists somehow parallel,

and through the embrace of the elemental

it has the power to transform

in the aftermath of any storm.

Tsunami, what may have been

In light of imagining what may have been,
tsunami anxiety reveals a place to be more water than land,
flimsy and wafer thin
mole hill made into a mountain,
we may elevate but are we ever truly safe?
Our precious lives on thin strings,
lines of parked cars unraveling like beads
into a sea that comes to strip all to necessity.
It recedes in whitewash,
building on the horizon like a layer of static,
a distant transmission becomes a warning,
a gargantuan trick of the eye
and you have to look twice,
lulled by disbelief,
nature’s brief revelation to the damned.
It now doubles forward
with the force of a cataclysm.
The sound of sirens and countless alarms
scatters the mob at shoreline charmed,
freezing the clocks,
when reasoning stops, there is only survival.

Before the buildings and bridges fell,
doomsayers would yell out
“Get to higher ground!”
Animals growing restless in their cages
bird silence punctuates the ages
between the impending pause
and the tightening claws
that clamp down and than recede,
baiting the breadth of the sea
to come forward again, but so quickly!

If there was something you could grab hold of
when that muddy bullforce of machine debris
and blood topples all in its path,
sweeping the land free in one gasp,
it laps at the foot of fallen mountains
before returning again
over the scene of the crime so to speak,
that no man’s land
that leaves only street signs like bent bristles,
telephone poles and lines
crucified and adrift against concrete barges,
the swirling wood of toppled garages
merging into one mangled shape.
Who escapes that hulking mass
of steel and glass city
folding in on itself like a fault line rift?
Everything slips into that darkening plain,
each interval more acute,
the leveling destruction, the degree of pain
and in the eternity of time it takes between waves,
what remains is the realization,
that it has just begun.

Bloated bodies bob up
to float spread eagle
like horrible rafts
through the gutted aftermath,
tied in tourniquets of earth,
channeled like a capillary burst,
inside to out, everything is reversed
and when that terrible day wanes
and the ugly liquid drains
what you’ll see resembles massacres on a battle plain
and like the smoldering of trash-heaped dumps
on the edges of humanity,
people will come to comb the debris for loved ones,
to pull a familiar face
from the disfigured disappearing act,
the double feature of disaster and aftermath
merging in an amorphous mass.
making a mockery of innocence, exposing our helplessness,
we felt it quiver
those comfortable strings that hold it together,
revealed as so flimsy
in the light of this tragedy,
how in an instant it can all be ripped away,
swallowed by the crack that reveals this reality
was underneath it all along.