All that is Impermanent

The sky holds all that is impermanent

in the eye’s reflection.

Like infinite sand grains

a gaze through the

stained glass illusion

that if anything stays true

to the way we remember it,

it is in the quintessences.

If the pain of loss is

an empty beach,

the pounding surf is

soundtrack to all that is out of reach.

The tranquil intervals that

swim through the inner reef

are carried away

on waves of

galloping horses and white spray.

A distortion to the veneer

that faith makes

surface over

all that is unclear.

The sea ,the source of

both reverence and fear.

A clash of cymbals reveal

a pair of swallows

from the deepest recesses

of symbolic release.

A swoop and a figure eight

to trace memory,

to find a face in the waves

stranded like a moon

still plain in daylight.

Years later it still remains,

smooth as a shell

over the sea

symmetrical

as a drop of water,

a pule lehua landing

on the wild naupaka.

Each thread of cloud

ushers in the change.

Light and shadow,

the interplay of branches,

in the totality a sway

and the cut of a blade

that touches

but does not alter

the horizon or

the immensity of space.

The world has swallowed us

in this place of benevolent delusion.

The elements lending themselves

to the spirit’s intrusion

between moments

layered like dreams

over the creative streams

cascading like sand

into the fissures

of impermanent footprints.

Momentum in the Surrendering

If the essence of travel

is like a bottle

on the floor of a moving bus,

it can encapsulate

a momentum in the surrendering,

how every curve in the road

repositions its

temporary home.

With the imagination as a source

and destinations unknown,

there’s a pause over a glassy surface

like the reflection of pines

from a chair on an empty pier.

See them penitent in this light,

pressed against the sky

and in crystalized moments

the breaks in the clouds

 fall back into place

on glacial lakes.

There are simple rituals of control

in a fractured life,

the boiling kettle

that begets tea

in a green leafed kitchen,

Tai Chi that steeps the internal

in a laundry beneath

the backdrop of mountains.

There is something sublime in

running of hands

over ridgelines and the curves

that follow the currents

of continuous movement.

Like the trains

who by track and tunnel

deconstruct images

that huddle beneath passion, variety.

Through these windows

the inevitable takes shape

and life gives it strength

by the knowledge of the end of the line.

A momentum in the surrendering,

the landscape’s haphazard design.

From a veil of dark,

from whatever meaning

can be divined

from memory’s spark

in a field of fog,

the commingling of shades,

journals and coffee stains,

the night blending into day.

Along these borders,

dreams and swollen rivers

a life blood is

sourced from a common ancestor,

the past is only passing through.

Adapting but never arriving,

embracing but never evading

the ever-present chaos

sewn into the stitches

of a fabric unraveling.

This rite of passage,

the unfinished fragments

of letters and old poems

from a life mostly forgotten,

is shown to have its own momentum

not in the surrendering

but in seizing the moment.

Milky Way Cove

If all light is born out of darkness

and the land returns to the sea

carving new dimensions

restructuring the boundaries

and the demarcations of time

that starve dreams of their totality.

To search for significance

in emptiness,

embracing the sun,

the unseen fires beneath

salty layers where creativity is born,

where the ancestors and their manifestations

are afloat over a sense of purpose.

Pulling islands out of nothingness,

these dark shapes

dimly aware of climbing

from the shade to another plane,

no longer steering

but yielding to the way the material mingles

with the concealed.

May the wind be guide

daybreak the first breath

to begin again,

transitioning with the tides.

Another wave of the hands and the lowering of oars.

A bend at the waist was the horizon,

the edge of the desk

permeable and stretched

over this limbo, waiting for signs,

for the stars to allign.

Drifting towards the

milky way cove in

an explosion of foam,

immutable forms

scattered in ink

disintegrating into

the awareness

of the furthest reaches of

a palpable silence.

Beneath everything

in a vast stream of consciousness,

you seek direction through undulation,

solitary passages from

a recurring dream.

Upon this craft of words

built for navigation,

you make circles in coastal fog,

piercing like beacons

these poems of the disappearing dark to light.

Each year feeling further from land,

from all the goals and plans.

The emotional resonance from

the past reveals

love and pain as two sides of the same

cloud shadow and raised coral,

seen from above

perceived through that mirror,

where is the boundary

between the light and the sea?

The immovable star?

The guide pulling me further from sleep?

Emptied of what is and isn’t necessary,

a blank sheet daily

for words and becoming complete

before night sweeps in

to begin it all again.

Myths and Whispers

Amidst the white noise and distortion

that lingers behind the transmission,

the shame and coercion,

fear’s formless shape shifting.

The future unknown,

with no bearings,

is solitary, self contained, .

set against a perpetual rock wall of options,

there remains a way.

Through the creation

of something parallel,

something that stands on its own

and often hidden from view.

Just off of the road

beyond the subdivision,

like a temple structure

existing in enigma to dreams.

Illuminating from the deepest soil,

the buried fish hooks of space and time,

a map of stars

to navigate the night and the fears.

I do not share the same

Listening with the eyes

and not the ears.

Despite divisive landscapes

and lack of balance,

the spirit remains

in alignment with motion,

the underlying current

in an endless ocean.

Something beyond the mist

and the mind

myths and whispers

moving the tides,

turning streets to streams,

without resistance it guides

a light surrender

to the will of the outrigger.

To the waves and the words

that bob up for release,

to creativity,

a sturdy craft in the chaos of dis-ease.

The Sea Receives

1.

The sea receives

the masquerade of the leaves

the changing glow

of poems in embryo

born on the wind

at season’s end,

the trees are in flames.

Memories remain

the fallen effigies,

reflected on surfaces

Illumination

writes the verses downstream,

where veins and waterways

relieve their light,

filling cracks in the horizon,

like dreams guiding creativity.

2.

At a break in the coral reef

the sea of sound is a symphony,

a chorus of tiny pebbles

being ground into sand.

Calligraphy to the deepest sensitivity

of knowing nothing can withstand

Change.

The passing of time follows the sun.

Various grades of light and expanse,

you cast a line and offer no resistance

to the wind breathing life into the waves

breaking chandeliers,

those crystalized fears

amplified in the solitude

of the beach and the shoreline.

3.

Where the sea meets the sky

there is light and shadow.

A fixed gaze

mixed with sun and spray

plays tricks with the mind,

while the tide calls Aphrodite inside.

Out beyond the break,

my love is buoyant in her own stride,

those moments I agonized

over dreams lost at sea,

of last words and no goodbye.

What has yet to return,

eventually drips back to me.

Weeping behind shades,

tongue tied to eternity,

the waves will answer

in essence what the mind creates

out of turbulence,

how all that has been given

in a moment

can be taken away.

Such is life, love, loss,

scattered between the darkness of thoughts

and the light of letting them go.

The sea receives us

like leaves and tiny pebbles,

the secret source of infinite peaks

as it courses through valleys

in a suspension of belief

that becomes a point of departure.

From the cliff soars an Iwa,

that thief of time,

spreading black wings

it’s shadow and the sea in rhyme

opens a portal.

More spirit than mortal,

we journey to the western shore to find

a leaping stone

where hand in hand over the dark water,

we’ll guide each other into the unknown.

Simultaneous Interaction

To hurry or to hesitate would blemish

the simultaneous interaction of the lines.

The strokes of a steadier hand that paired

the smoother translation of words already written,

soon is burdened with rhyme and corrupted by revision.

Left in an unfinished state, one poised for visitation,

is waiting on a train in a rural place,

where the air is heavy with anticipation.

The scent of burning brush,

the sound of the cicadas before dusk

fades seamlessly into the call of nocturnal tree frogs.

The depot is a clearing amidst the confusion,

in the thickest of swamps, somewhere south

submerged like cypress in black pools of thought.

You’ll fill them with headlights, beaming into the abandon

like a thrust of insight and silence in tandem.

The indecipherable attempts to apprehend

what in essence retreats or withstands being hemmed in.

Peeling back layers of reclamation,

a transformation of what lies within, as opposed to the surroundings,

unraveling congruent lines, convoluted and captive,

from the kudzu vines.

In the places ideas get lost, those intervals between words

that murmur like the cover, where sentences run on tracks

just to end abruptly in nowhere.

You get a perfect picture of that border and wonder

Is this where creativity resides?

Being? Non-being?

Careening through this landscape of collision,

and the shape shifting textures

superimposed on the vision.

Somewhere there’s a clearer picture than mine,

an expression that yields to

the simultaneous interaction of the lines

running unimpeded through the forest

until they’re found in far away outposts of the mind

and in the glimmer of distant tracks.

Dawn Emerges

In the serenity of a mountain morning,

dawn emerges from a darkened robe.

Along the Bron- Yr- Aur borders

and ever changing folds

she tempers the coals

with the cool breath of night,

keeping hillsides from burning

and transforming everything to gold.

 

You are the marriage of opposites,

the light strands sequenced in a braid,

two faces coiling through sleep,

the sun coalesced with the shade.

In the mushroom clouds of this shifting

through the zeitgeist of these times,

you pull a blanket over the fear

that hangs in the air

as sure as the expectancy of a new day.

Your dexterous fingers turn the page,

luminous as a laser

that naturally knows the way

through misshapen clouds.

Through the Tao of sculptural precision,

you reveal the light parts,

the porcelain in night’s revision.

Bear witness to this masterclass in adapting,

the emerging image by degrees.

 

It is true that you dwell there,

though I cannot know you as my pupil.

For you taught me to listen through the distortion,

to see the crystal coursing

through every passing action.

In the crane’s graceful transitions

on the banks of the estuary,

you’re the wings of white light

ascending from the dark of the periphery.

A neck disappearing

with a feather and a ripple,

slender, underwater,

gathering in the edges

of a timeless brook

invigorating with the medicine

of soft murmurs and whispering,

breaking the noxious transmission of

virus and confusion.

 

Dawn is the calm amidst danger

that leaves its imprint everywhere.

A balm over the psychic wounds

we perceive clearer

as she pulls from her pouch a sacred mirror

smooth as an undisturbed lake.

Everything under the sky

now unmasked can dab their face.

Reborn daily, healed through creativity.

If only temporarily, this reprieve

penetrates the anticipation

without force or fist but gently disguised

in mist that asks nothing of the ridge,

all along Wa’ahila she dances.

I watch this from a distance

her entrance, these footprints,

the undisturbed parchment

where the spirit finds nourishment.

Simultaneously quick and deliberate,

she remain undefined,

opening her book of changes

with words written brightly,

then fading on subsequent pages,

always scattered by the wind

towards the horizon

as the day begins in the creases

where the night grows dim.

 

Dusk, A Farewell

At dusk we bid farewell.

Restlessly stirring the days inside sounds,

making deranged concoctions in the clouds.

In subterranean wells, sirens are drowned by rain,

wind is amplified in the brain, sailing through sleepless nights.

Expelled into the horse latitudes of idle hours,

if only they could be painted like brilliant flowers,

a motley of colors to distinguish golden horizons

from the sea at large.

A farewell to your craft, adrift in ideas.

Eyes of red navigation,

the body a black expanse, to submerge, trawling deeply

for the coins of sunken ships and elusive silver fish.

Beneath these surfaces

the mystical coincidences are accumulated in song.

You’ve dreamt underbelly,

words radiating starboard from the hull.

From the bridge a farewell.

A hawk leaves the inlet

with talons clutching the metallic scales of an alewife.

With a glint in the sun, the imprint is seared into memory,

like a piercing cry

we’ll recall later from a different frequency.

The antennae of rooftops witness

many farewells of undetermined suffering,

almost human, the sound of the sun falling.

A bird of unknown origin,

leaving no wake as it plunges into the ocean.

The trajectory of its body, a descending shade,

with each moment the shadow increases

further into the loneliness of De Chirico courtyards.

 

Dusk, a farewell.  The world spinning out of control.

Grinding to dust all the ambition that burned cities bright,

pressed into a daily toll, a number that will always grow.

It was through creativity that we learned of community.

These gatherings are not forgotten,

nor can they be swept into isolated piles

of suspicious eyes with no smiles.

Vulnerable, the tiny flames with no kindling.

Blow on the ends of our hope

before extinguished candles become smoke

and the landscape grows cold with sorrow.

A farewell to plans, time lapsed lives

that no longer strive but are slowed, compartmentalized.

Twilight is no longer spent applauding fireworks.

The future is no longer a bright sparkler

reflected in everyone’s eyes.

The gaze has been averted to a decapitated flower

that appears so much smaller as it sits on the water

before  being taken under.

A farewell, the illusion of distance in beacon light.

A sweeping seascape of change with no compass,

the coming of an age born out of chaos without counsel,

save all those books and albums.

We’ll witness the weight of industry overwhelming humanity.

In shrinking spaces the imbalance is amplified,

navigating the collapse, like one of the damned,

with sanitized hands and covered faces,

peering into a void with no features,

like empty theaters.

It’s a tragic scene, is there any room left for heroism?

A silver lining in defeat?

Intrigue for imagined patrons

watching from empty seats?

Run the credits, words engraved in stone.

Save the last gasp for the projector,

exhausting its last reel of film alone.

 

Dusk, a farewell. Trains departing depots.

Wheels screetch, no one speaks,

voices swallowed in tunnels of what’s to come.

No parting kisses from the distance

or faces stuck to windows

like in old black and white photos,

waving handkerchiefs of goodbye.

The darkening of eyes adjust

to the damp unfamiliarity

we’re meant to breathe in.

Breathe again, the end comes to everything.

Yet, fear of the eventual end

is inherent in the fear that this may never end.

Is there light at the end of this tunnel?

Will the sun rise tomorrow over the ocean?

Will rain fill rivers to maneuver these bends

without our mouths consuming the land?

Without these thoughts can the bird songs

still hold sway in the chaos that canopies them?

Will they find the sky ceilingless,

or a desperate color

in the flutter of wings?

Will they glide on the wind

and the infinite it brings?

Time will tell, for now farewell.

The Motion Beneath Confinement

The Potential of Travel:

The potential of travel when confined to islands becomes mental.

The strength of creativity, equilateral

to the flight of frigate birds

and the horizon that completes the triangle.

The shadow casts a wide net knowing not where it will land,

somewhere equatorial,  over vast tracts of luminous sand.

Sometimes it’s necessary to scan an entire ocean

before we can temper the distortion.

Can the mind’s eye touch the spirit?

Will the interplay of a thousand images get near it?

There comes a surge of words but you barely hear it

in the motion of a distant storm

and the supple blackness that gives form to the correspondence.

 

The Drifting Leaves no Footprints:

Lodged like a shell in this primitive expanse

your dreams of drifting leave no footprints.

You await the tide,  the next great swell

to bring you back out again.

Through the hypnotic reverie of the surf

the sound of whitewash dissolves

into ancient squares.

Surreal and composed

it proceeds over stone

breathing its soundtrack into the motion

of when it comes and it goes.

It rises and recedes

beneath the toes of a statue,

this patron saint of lonely virtue,

companion to the emptiness that time would accrue

over centuries of our movements and the residual echoes

are the only things left that pass through.

 

Fragments of the Imagination:

Fragments of the imagination gathered like debris,

it’s a war for control within the limits of any city.

In the contents of journals

In the semblance of journeys,

fragments of experience are closely cropped,

before spilling to your feet like errant teardrops,

turning the well worn passages into cascading streams

and through these gleaming mirrors all will be revealed.

 

Outside of Awareness:

On the outskirts of the glass city,

far from the sheltered harbor,

near to the pathways outside of awareness

there is a mystical sequence of moments

at the crossroads of consequence,

a series of propositions to remind us

that we’re merely riders on the wind,

passengers on the bridge

spanning the moment

between the past and the future,

suspended, nebulous as a rumor

afloat in the ether,

the faintest of bells

ringing out from towers and hills

and the freedom that follows

the silhouette of sweeping swallows.

 

 

The Back Valley Exhales:

You’ll descend like a strand of rain

loosened from a cloud,

a radiant bird

the illuminated shroud

of a monk at work with the sacred word

describing the light before it’s dispersed.

The knoll is aglow in resplendent intervals of flame

from out of the shade of the back valley

it is framed by the ridges, to hold in the essential energy.

Until exhaling with the strongest of wind,

it is a phoenix conjured again.

There’s an attempt to harness it,

to give names to the shrill songs

but wayward is my own breath,

destined to unravel before long.

Looking back on your travel like a colorful thread

lifted like wildflowers from the riverbed

unencumbered from moors

the moments of ascent

reaching towards the unbroken sky

when there is no breath to give

the memories die.

 

The Motion Beneath Confinement:

There’s a highway that follows the coast

and around every bend

recollections call out like restless ghosts.

A temporary retreat from quarantine

the city is shuttered, encased in concrete.

Here you evaporate instantly

into mist and sea salt,

leaving stains we’re urgently altered

by the whims of the water.

Waves breaking against the foundations,

no windows remain.

All the best laid plans,

wind blown and sacrificed to the rain,

to all the old gods in nature.

We’ll advance, hand in hand with the unknown.

All structure going up like matchsticks,

like retirement homes in the lava zone.

Against the hardened darkness

there are streaks of light,

in contrast we find the alignment.

So we lose ourselves for a time

peeling back layers of confinement,

seeking motion for guidance

to see through the blindness

and the sickness that knows no limits.

 

 

The Haualia Breeze

It comes to me half-asleep and hungover.

Like a thief, slipping in unnoticed

and sneaking away with my weariness.

It was just before dawn

when I was stirred by her soft fingers

tickling the chimes

in that time before the birds.

Dancing through the curtains of calm

transforming to a soft palm

that dabs my brow’s perspiration.

Is this a trick of the imagination?

This gentle presence,

ethereal, magical

drawing the whole valley to me.

I would later describe the experience to the ladies of Na Mea,

inquiring whether it was known to them?

Was it named in the way other myriad winds are in Hawaii?

The one they suggested was Haualia,

as she makes her home on the slopes of Wa’ahila

between Manoa and Palolo valleys.

Geographically it checks out,

but you get the sense it couldn’t really be pinned down

and maintains an air of mystery

as it tiptoes softly between the homes

adjacent to the overgrown alley that leads to the sea.

Haualia, blooms from out of cracks in the void

where creation unfurls like the opening of a flower,

the slow motion advance of lava

that is in no hurry to disturb the silence.

This unseen energy is happy to remain invisible,

becoming evident through all that it touches,

penetrating awareness like a scent tied to memory

that in the transition between day and night

is a reinforcement of all that is light.

A white dove loosened from under a jade thumb,

it comes from within the definition of rock,

welcoming the passage of water.

She is unveiled in tongues of mist

that whisper to each other the secret language of hills,

the longing of lovers separated by the precipice

and left with only the enchanted expressions

in the absence of form.

It passes down like a gift from the sky

tied in ribbons of wild streams

and all the beautiful reflections

are the fluttering visitations

in the permeable realm of dreams.

Trembling on the edges of water,

it moves down valley

like a breath followed by the lili-lehua rain.

A passage so delicate that the webs of the forest

can withstand this passage

and hold in suspense the awareness

of hidden pools above falls

where all the floating white petals

are moons that maintain their serenity

despite all of the movement beneath them.

It seems to soften everything it touches along the way,

all of the loss and pain of separation,

reinforcing the idea of yielding

to the unbroken continuity of creativity.

It inspires no resistance

in the subconscious bridge at half-light.

Your first thoughts, awake again

and never quite alone.

Aware of this benevolence

as she roams through,

illuminating the feeling

that you are no more than

a blade of grass along her ridge,

just a vessel for the privilege

of visitation that comes in many forms

but comes to you in this way.