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.

Empty is Everything

There’s a change in the air

brief flashes

shaded in El Greco skies

hammering messages

where mountains rise

but remain indecipherable

in the distance.

Behold the lucent wind gusts

shimmering in the light

transient angels in flight

shivering the landscape

from leaves to window panes

with a whistling refrain

as they pass into the distance.

Unprepared to sever completely

the warmth that holds you inside,

seeping into the skin

enveloping, sleeping in

to the collapse

of autumnal ash

in smoldering wood fires.

Its scented aura

expelled from the parlour

to halo chimneys

in the distance.

Through small drifts

the runaway is renewed,

clouds never stationary

but guided through our periphery,

leaving no trace

save a silent footprint

that borders the space

where the sky meets the sea

in the distance.

A bead of sweat

is a poem still wet,

 the stain of its ink

won’t cover the landscape we think,

evading rain

it’s driving and draining

your every thought,

laying the stone of this road

alternating dreams

with all you were taught

passed by way of blacktop

receding into the distance.

Memory is brightly guiding

in the darkest of places

bonfires on beaches,

so gather what you wish

until loosened from a gloved fist

that supple fish

swimming to far shores

years in the distance.

It is something to grasp at

but come up empty.

Well empty is everything…

to us anyway.

Foundations Uncovered

Roots pushing upwards

over the landscape with abandon

through the windows of this edifice

seemingly at random.

A palace for the discarded

in a sea of bamboo

its passages unguarded

foundations uncovered

where once royal origins started

to decay.

In the emptiness

where once you would roam

protected from the common by kapu

now ficus limbs and wisteria call home

until in time it forms an invasive canopy

that obscures all ancestry.

Ceilingless, still you could be a refuge

a stone anchor for this journey

that has moved and shifted its locale endlessly,

alternating between light and darkness

in valleys veiled in mist

dipped in umbrage

downstream it falls

along a disappearing path it calls

silently

illuminated momentarily

by a cascade of light

restless, displaced

into shadow passes

far from the world of the masses

the phones, the screens, the ego schemes

disconnected from social classes,

the mindless chatter

in spurious cities of false dreams

planting seeds of deceit

that all can achieve the elite.

Oh to retire beneath the leaves

to become small again

through the doormouth it recedes

like time, drifting away on cloud rafts

above a dense canopy.

The imagination,

from a tenuous position

is sealed underneath the great trees.

Sustenance for the poet

nourishment for the melancholy,

its time has passed

for some it lays there still

blending in to lava rock and crown land

but like a shadow on the mountain

it has disappeared again.