Double anuenue

I turned to look back where we'd walked from and saw two rainbows arching. A group of Filipino workers clustered near the entrance to the cemetery, preparing a gravesite. I took a photo of the rainbow, a backhoe in the foreground, man seated with his back to me. "You like my backhoe?" he said, turning around. A second man looked at me: "you want to buy it?" No, I said, I have no use for it, except to take pictures. And that is a poetics.

 

Almost home, having stopped at the eucalyptus tree with its "abstract" designs, glistering greens and blacks, we ran into our retired Air Force friend. I insisted he look at my photos of the rainbows. "You're out here too late," I said. No, he'd seen them coming through the H3 tunnel. Amazing. "How was your Thanksgiving?" he asked. He'd taken his wife to Roy's (not a steakhouse, as he'd thought). "Oh, that's high makamaka," I said. "My wife's name is Maka," he said, telling me about his $187 dinner. Must have been the three glasses of wine, he said, heading off down the hill.