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.

Crystal Parallel

The shift was palpable.

From the road

through the first layer of trees,

the mind quietly surfaces

somewhere parallel.

Between the notes of a Shama

leading deeper

by beak and by feather,

the lyrical river

initiates the medicine

in the essence of nature

with canopied light

to transcribe the

enigma of moss

on illuminated stone

faces from the past

when you’re no longer alone

in reflection

in pictures and portals

through dark pools

for the outstretched wings

emerging.

With stealth you’ll go

tree to tree

through the valley,

emissary to the summer breeze

that breathes

in one animated pull of the string,

everything is tied together.

Your white feather

was the first light

in the night sky,

woven in the outlines

of mountains,

a temporal indention

in all the transitioning.

The serenity of streams,

the crystal renewal

of movement

that doesn’t cling to branches

or any one position.

Like a worm in the beak

of indecipherable information,

I’ll go with you down valley.

In Wailupe

rock root meandering.

In Moanalua

by the ruin of a grand staircase,

this parallel place

hidden from view,

caressed and cool

ribbon of silence

only broken by song,

caught in the jungle’s mesh

lush beneath palms.

A thrush and the passing rain

will nourish the parched,

far from the city squalor

and those who’ll twist nature

into backdrops,

into what can be quantified,

voices disrupting the silence.

In the nexus of choices,

there are those that lead you back.

Time, with crystalline continuity

becomes a thought,

firm, re-assuring

that I would rather be here than there,

coming to meet

that which is obscure

but never leaves.

Aihualama in Darkness and Light

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.

The Color that knows no Border

The essence of travel,

like a luminous thread

in the recesses of memory,

unravels again

after years of neglect,

for it has not faded.

Its radiant color knows no border

in the confines of categories

or in the dark closets

conveniently tucked away

with letters and photos from a parallel life.

 

There is wind behind the doors you would pry

the sudden brush burnt scent

of foreign fields and infinite sky.

The rush is immediate

and time is flipped on its side.

All your notes on motion scatter

like prisms of decisions,

east or west?

Best the flicker of inspiration

that always leans towards the far flung places.

 

Once that tide turned,

all that was constrained

is drawn out by the moon,

a cool depository of longing,

leading the retreat

into phases of falling.

The life left behind

each night is deconstructed

and getting further away.

The illusion of brightness

only highlights the reality of distance,

for change was continuous

and none could get too close

to whatever we were seeking.

 

The boundless wind makes haste on the ocean

initiating waves

like raised lines from the empty page

distorted by fingers

that try to tighten and contain

belief that there is form to disorder,

something to be worn of the unseen,

draped  like an ancient sweater

over the shoulders of the highway

that runs unencumbered on the periphery.

It sounds like surf next to the machinery,

a tempting break in the repetition.

So you’ll make an abrupt transition

towards the outskirts of that city

and the wilderness that runs the length of the past.

 

The parkway is traversed by twisting two lane,

stark against the season’s shift to amber,

I think it was September

when the sudden flare paints a forgotten corner

of what you’d remember,

forming the backdrop of further forays

into conscious embrace

of the unknown all around you.

The slow burning blue ridge

turning with every corner,

like the foliage,

we’ll make our way south

towards that place in the past

longing for renewal.

These cycles in the essence of travel,

infinite, immutable,

where one color ends another will begin.

In the Metaphor of Rivers

Nothing remains stuck.

On the breath that expresses more than thoughts

to flow down valley

like a wind in Wailupe

that tickles the chimes in the Norfolk pines

rooted to a moment, despite movement.

There is a clearing

where solitude is revealing instruction

to a tangle of brush strokes

imparting light to the surface renewal.

In the metaphor of rivers there is no arrival,

only its illusion.

There’s a gentle loosening of leaves

expressing the value of paperweight

that does not incorporate words

but notes something of gravity to the motionless,

to those mired to the banks.

Though in their lines lies a vagrancy,

the realization that all are carried away eventually

by the wind and by the rain.

The river journey comes to its insatiable mouth,

infinitely consuming itself.

Can movement be a mirror on these surfaces?

To seize a half-formed image of oneself,

sped up, transparent,

as if on a current,

lifting the anchor you go with it.

Moving downstream to draw from the periphery

some sense of apprehension.

With a craft that compulsively fills the contours

with some semblance of direction,

overshadowed by the next bend

by further distance ill defined

in waterways that resemble the last.

Released from the grid,

the river was aided by floods,

while the sky slid by

on an infinite sheet of glass.

Poetry was like the passing clouds

that gather fragments of its brilliance,

before inspiration dissipates

before the rain precipitates

what needs to change and what can be saved,

what remains of glass shattered

into thousands of mutually arising patterns

interwoven in the aftermath

of another passage to sea.

 

Endless yet Incomplete

The spirit dreams itself through the land
to stand now gazing
through reflecting pools
at the myriad features
like masks on the wall
in this theater of skin.
Scenes to glow from within
like diamonds in an abyss
appearing endless yet incomplete.

Into purple rest
the sun now retreats over the ridge
kicking up cinders, shooting out prisms
until its first incision
will give life again to these sleepy limbs.
As day breaks the shadowplay,
Aurora will peel away
a ripple in the wave
revealing a wrinkle in the renewal
of birdsong that breaks the barrier
between beginnings and endings
the time babies are born
and elders pass away.

Some live on this edge,
balancing their tragedy every day.
Unable to feel deeply
the empathy between strangers,
the frightening familiarity
in a fear of ending up lonely.
This illusion appears to be
the last mist to lift
from the rift that keeps us separated
by the towering upheaval
that leaves us sifting
through the rubble of the bliss
we once knew had no division.

Nothing like being Suspended

Five hours in flight with nothing to unglue.
Five hours suspended in cloud chewed through
by a sky of insight
that would imbue with light
the teary beads of precipitation
hanging in the windows of anticipation.
The illuminated trails yet to arrive,
strapped in and forced to set distractions aside,
cultivating nothing of importance,
nothing blogworthy,
but this will go up anyway
and that is the irony.
As we rise in elevation,
resigned to rapid penetration,
a ragged correspondence
will compensate for being connected to nothing.
Red eyed relationships of leaving
equilibrium
losing nothing if not the illusion of balance,
the luster of newness,
the lust for her turbulence,
memories tripped up on the fading trust
spurring a glance that asks
“Where have you been?”
Exiled on an island,
writing to the infinite and the sensual
within the harsh borders of coral.
The weight of an ocean will hold up this craft
but lend nothing towards its escape.
Below us an endless graph of salt
clay stillness with the occasional squall
breaking the monotony,
a storm surge over the real possibility
of being caught in its momentum.
Rips of wind tilt the within,
pulling at these compartments of recollection,
an internal state like a projection on the horizon,
a spotlight glow
beyond the seascape of shadow
and definition, a prison we’d never find ourselves in.
Excitement and apprehension
towards an infinite well the dark was sucked into.
The ocean veiled in textured clouds
that were like razor reeds
to sharpen the sleep of the waiting deep.
The melancholy of what you leave
meets relief at being in motion again.
Reluctant acceptance courts disarray and distance,
rekindling old strands,
those gypsy strands
that caravan the sinking sands
of just reward
punctuated by renewal’s lonely chords
sliding into the nothing you were descending towards.

Transitions

You arrived with the smell of the sea

in the fibres of yak skin.

Freeing winter from your scarf,

you’d splinter cords to start a fire

to warm wine and sit by her,

for long hours sleeping,

you would venture no further.

Always reluctant to organize your whereabouts

into any recognizable pattern,

your path bends and zig zags

like hot liquid wax moments

between movement for its own sake.

The mystery would swallow you

with an insatiable urge

and you’d follow her

through liminal spaces

poised

to watch dawn progress into day

receding into dusk

until darkness strays into the sea.

The sea that instructs

each moment,

a renewal

an assistance

without resistance

you collect the submerged images

of dream precipitation

that could never be measured

in the blank fish-like stares

that assume assimilation.

Solitary images reflected in liquid windows

blurry, empty as a drained pint

empty as one not quite

everything to their lover,

there will be another

in the bits and fragments

you piece together

apartment lights

glittering and temporal

until leading to inevitable

exile.

 

Out at sea,

the course you map

reveals only

that no two passages are alike

but transition and tread water

until currents condemned to wander

lead you through the wake of shipwrecked error.

Home would be never

more than a mirage,

an invention, a montage

of memories and voices

albatross to your myriad choices,

you hear them calling from afar,

from out of the fog and eastern forests

full of mist and crows

there arose

a familiar threshold

something concrete and not simply imagined

a place to unfold weary limbs

to transition from whim and vagrancy

to the warmth of family.