Billy Mills review

 Billy Mills is an Irish poet, one who devotes a lot of time and energy to reading the work of others. He read my books, Lilith Walks and Meditations carefully, here: https://ellipticalmovements.wordpress.com/2024/03/27/recent-reading-march-2024/

And now he's done an attentive reading of I and Eucalyptus, here: https://ellipticalmovements.wordpress.com/2024/10/23/recent-reading-october-2024-a-review/

Lilith and the untaken photograph

Lilith and I saw a man walking toward us on the asphalt path next to Kahekili, a lanky man in dark clothing. When we got closer, I told him that I've been doing final edits on a piece of writing that will be published and that one section was about him and his wife pushing a baby stroller on this very walk. "What kind of writing is it?" he asked, and I expressed some befuddlement. He said he goes to visit Leona every day at the other big Kaneohe cemetery; her parents had bought four plots, two for her and two for her sister. Their dad was a vet. It's got a wonderful view of the bay, and is within walking distance of the house where she grew up. Several years ago, I'd ask Les and Leona if I could take their picture. Even though their nephew is a professional photographer, they said no. I regret the picture not taken.

Lilith and my tee ball player

We crossed the street to avoid two little dogs that Lilith didn't want to see. Three young men were walking on the other side, coming back from the pool with their towels. One of them greeted me; he'd been on my tee ball team when he and my son were five years old. Since then, he'd been in the Navy. Now? "Doing lots of LGBTQ stuff and singing in the Honolulu Gay Chorus," he said. His mom had a knee replaced a month ago, and is only now driving again. And your dad? I asked. Even then, he and the young man's mother were divorced; he did baseball duty with his son. "You know what your dad said to me once?" I asked. "He told me not to let you act like a girl. I said that was not my job, nor did I think acting like a girl was a bad thing." He said his dad had taken him to try out for another team and had thrown the ball--hard--at him. Hit him three times in the head. Never played baseball again. (And then I remembered the young man's name, because it comes after "the Eskimo" in a Bob Dylan song.) He smiled, said his dad had died of cancer a few years ago, but had always had to remind himself that his son was gay. You could watch the gears moving in his head, he said. Smiled.

Lilith meets a Trump supporter

 

The gray bearded man in the Ka’a’awa park came to sit across the picnic bench from me. He held a cigarette and lighter, but wasn’t smoking. He has one of the best cardiologists on the island, one Dr Ng. Had a couple strokes. Said he likes my shirt (Nope / Not Again) it reads with toupee and long tie on the o. He doesn’t understand why people don’t like Trump. Trump cares about people. People listen to him and Kamala has no foreign policy. Inflation and gas prices. I point out that both are down. He says he’s comfortable in his positions. Came here over 30 years ago from Brooklyn. Kept saying how much he liked Lilith. Her coloring, her ears. His girlfriend has a sweet pitbull. She goes to Alaska on business, and he goes with her. Really likes Alaska. “Have a good day,” he says as he walks away.

Lilith and the man on the curb

Lilith walked onto the grass between sidewalk and street to sniff the man's glass of milky coffee. Beside the glass was an unlit cigarette, a carton, and what I remember as a bracelet. He held a phone in his hand. "What's her name?" the man asked. "Lily," I said. "Oh, a flower." He asked my name and I said the origin of my name was also lily. When I asked him for his, he responded "Donald Trump." "I saw that," he remarked on seeing my reaction. "It's all entertainment," another woman had said to him. 

 

He'd clearly heard Trump's latest, and wasn't happy about it. Used to work for Hopaco, now Office Max, in Anaheim and Tacoma. Wore a Seattle Seahawks shirt. He asked my nationality, and where I grew up. Irish/German, and east coast. (He's Scottish and Filipino.) When I told him I've lived here for 34 years, he said, "I like numbers!" He pulled the cigarette up to his mouth, but didn't light it. Was happy to have me take a photograph of him. Small man on a curb, holding up a shaka, hoping for the best on Nov. 5. His twins were born on the 4th. Numbers again.

Wisdom parami: Elegy 30

Wisdom parami

I’m supposed to

Talk about wisdom

Tomorrow thinking relation

Is where it

Begins or ends

Me and tree

You and me

Even now in

Relation across life’s

Death line you

In tomorrow I

In today still

Spooked by drone

Video of man

In bombed out

Building seated on

Dust couch dust

Man wrapped in

Dust fabric staring

At drone we

Cannot see because

We are it

We kill because

We see / is

That it / vision

As violence when

I only wish

To see you 

Whole again and wise

Notes: "The man" is Yahya Sinwar; "you" is Sina

Sign-waving without Lilith

We were told to stand next to the wall beside the highway, hold our signs away from the road, and look each driver in the eye, while waving. Some of us responded to waves back with shakas. Only between traffic cycles did we talk to one another. I googled one woman on the line, having recognized her name. She'd fought against H3, advocated for Hawaiian culture, and clearly knew someone I admired at UHM. So, between cycles, I meandered down to talk to her. 

 

I told her I was retired from UHM, and she said tenure needed to end; so many students tell her their professors are lazy; the legislature needs a direct line of communication. She'd worked for Ph.D. engineers and they were so arrogant. So many ph.d's are arrogant. She had never finished college; only did three years and never got back to it. But she'd had people with fancy degrees who worked for her. The students are customers, she said, and there needs to be accountability. (I said I didn't want to think of students as customers, because then I'd be trying to sell them something.) It's a business, she opined. I asked her to give my aloha to her friend, the one I admire for her political savvy.

 

A bus stopped in front of us. An older woman stepped out, walking away from us. One of the sign wavers lit up and said, "when she gets out of the bus, we know it's time to go home."

A is for apathy: Elegy 29

 

A is for apathy

Om mani peme

Hung you’d mutter

Push back against

The pressure of

Reality (Wallace Stevens)

At least make

Obstacles of sound

To defeat sound

(This morning saws

Shear the dovesong)

And I can’t

Push death away

Or the fascism

You prepared for

By using Signal

(An encrypted app)

I understand apathy

Is push back

Noise reducing headphones

Interfering with interference

Apathy’s active response

To grief to

Murder to misogyny

Stolid cemetery workers

Strip sod / stoic /

They’re older men

Who stop to

Watch traffic below

Like two statues

Shovels in hand

Before they resume

Hard labor for

The death industry

What got Mark

About Dachau was

How exquisitely beautiful

Was the surrounding

Landscape not what

My mother described

When she reported

Seeing corded piles

Of corpses on

Railroad cars men

In striped pajamas

I can see

Wanting to look

Only at one

Not the other

Guarding heart space

A photograph of

You at beach

With Selina smiling

Peaceful heart surf

Your aumakua bird

Forget what came

After / I cannot /

Gaza, year two: Elegy 28

 

Conversation opened. 1 unread message.

Gaza: Year Two

Sina, we’re called

Upon to speak

A friend sends

Photo of hand

Raised in conflagration

Of Gaza hospital

Says we were

Talking about Radhika

This was mother

And daughter burning

Is it like this

In the afterworld

Outside the box

Ashes scattered like

Glitter for saints

Gleaming faces turned

Up where artists

Hang on trapezes

Let dust fall

To be boxed

Later / Murphy’s ashes

On bar floor

Down theater toilet

Don’t know to

Laugh or weep

This world burning

What do you

Say, dear Sina,

On after-death apps

Maeve killed bird

Yesterday / I buried

It in dumpster

Bryant found rat

Foot in old

Trap in Volcano

All this blood

On our hands

Our claws / Sign

Bomb and let

It rip apart

Kids who can’t

Yet read and

Old women with

Eyes too fogged

To see anything

Beyond clear suffering

Absent Lilith meets the queen

 

"It's awful what they did to our queen," said the small woman in a large sun hat, sitting next to me on a picnic bench at Swanzy Beach Park. "It's men," she said. "I know that women can be cruel, but men have something else going." I'd met her earlier at the other end of the narrow beach with her dog Poni. Poni was Queen Liliuokalani's dog. Looked like the photograph of Lilith I showed her.

When I walked from beach to park, I'd seen her tiny crocs on the rock wall, neatly set beside a purple leash; Poni was walking without it. Now we were watching the K`a`a`awa pickle ball club, which recently lost a member to the attempted assassination of an ex-president. "The FBI was swarming all over the place for a while," she said. I detected some memory lapses in her speech. Though she'd introduced herself to me twice by name, I can't remember, except that it began with an E.

 

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Liliuokalani%27s_dog,_1917.png#/media/File:Liliuokalani's_dog,_1917.png

Lilith befriends a nurse

Lilith stopped on the path alongside Kahekili, not to smell the considerable perfumes in the grass, but to wait for a woman walking toward us. We exchanged words. "Have a nice walk," I started to say, when I realized that Lilith wanted her on the walk, too. She'd stop to smell, then run forward to catch up with, as she turned out, Maile, a Kapiolani nurse who just went back to work after the strike and lockout. (It wasn't for money, it was for ratios, she said, and they got their ratios.) As we started walking together, she said she'd been going to Kailua the other day, when she decided not to. She went to Target at Windward Mall to return something, but decided not to stay to shop. She drove back to our neighborhood, saw a toddler running down the sidewalk all by himself. She stopped her car, tried to flag him down, went to someone's open door. No parent. Called the police, waited for 20 minutes. Finally, a woman came running down the street . . . the nurse (her name is Maile) assumes there was a reason she'd not gone to Kailua and cut her shopping trip short. The little guy needed her. 

 

 

The former Bernie supporter

"So you're the person with the righteous bumperstickers!" I said to a woman at the ticket booth to the Temple; she'd gotten out of a truck with four Bernie bumperstickers, one I'd wondered about. "Yes, I used to love Bernie," she said, "but I gave up on him when he surrendered to Hillary." Now she doesn't care. I said I was happy to see her truck, because most of the cemetery employees seem to support Trump. She doesn't like any of them now. They're all on the same team and just pretend otherwise. She had a spiritual experience during COVID and realized that none of this matters. Everything will be ok. "But what is ok?" I asked. She smiled. I asked if you couldn't think both important, politics and the spiritual life. No, the politics drove her crazy. I said I wondered at how she could be both so cynical and so hopeful at the same time. "People call me a walking contradiction," she said. "Everything will be ok." Lilith and I walked away. "Vote for Kamala," I said.

Identity positions: Elegy 27

Identity Positions

Identity is other

People / what they

Want us to

Be / one thing

Or another / or

The operative word

You either fit

None or most

Shape-shifting where

Shape wasn’t goal

But way station

Like a comma

Between clauses or

Items in lists

Store bought selves

Easier to shelve

Than silly putty

Or broken egg

Identity is history

Not essence you

Knew / culture not

Birth stamp but

Stories some of

Which might sometimes

Be true--

Kintsugi: Elegy 26

 

Your brothers all

In uniform / lavalavas

Flowered aloha shirts /

Between them complicated

Politics let drop

Easily I lay

On the couch

4 a.m. the next

Morning / jetlagged /

Feeling their grief

As mending as

Scar tissue denotes

Healing more than

Hurt / when Selina

Broke down at

Magic Island's healing

Circle and I

Put my arm

Around her shoulder

("The fittest poet

In the world!")

And the space

Between us warmed

Like you were

In there somehow

Holding out your

Finger which we

Saw directed at

The ocean sky

Whatever is clear

Measure of compassion

Where measure is

Not at issue

Mending comes after

A broken pot

Packed full of

Flowers / gold stitching

To show us

Where potter drew

Shard to shard

Where we made

Lines to erase

Distance you are

There like tree’s

Paperbark mouthing joy

When wind arrives

Gold Watch / Elegy 25

Gold Watch

No consolation to

Be remembered I

Know / to be

Divorced from am

Or are / verbs

Have lost their

Tenses you need

Not learn them

Or wear watches

(“It’s about time,”

Eddie Vedder says

Of Trump’s $100K

Bling) to see

Time that cannot

Be seen except

In retrospect memory

Invisible fog unless

Developed on leaves

But we yank

Them off branches

Wood and water

Water and wood

Lake sodden with

Houses timber animals

Roofs / who protects

Us now without

Your presence / friends

Orphans / you who

Were drawn to

Underdogs doggedly watch

From heaven’s keyhole

Return to child’s

Images for what

Cannot be seen

As ascension (the

-c in Italian

Sounds as -ch)

Like Chimney Rock

That floats in

Lake Lure no

Allure to wreckage

Someone’s uncle is

Missing someone’s child

Is missing someone’s

Missing as you

Are: there, presence.

On wearing a Harris/Walz shirt in the south

 

A woman my age flashed me a thumb’s up at the rest stop near Bristol as we crossed paths. I smiled, but wondered why her hand was held so close to her body. Did she not want the man behind her to see it? I sat down on a bench near the car. She came out of the restroom and walked up close to me. “Do Trump supporters ever go after you for your shirt?” She asked softly. I said no. “Are we the silent majority?” She thought me brave for wearing my shirt. She didn’t know “why they’re so ignorant,” and worries what will happen if he becomes president again. Some of her nearest and dearest. After she said she’d just have to pray, I noticed the cross hung around her neck. My husband arrived. I told her he’s with us. Her husband walked by, not greeting us. She and I said goodbye with our hands held palm to palm.

 

Just north of Lexington, at the top of a very high flagpole, flew a confederate flag. Only slightly faded.

Body / Mind: Elegy 24

Body / mind problem

The body is

Present / the mind

Past / the body

Identified by her

Hair / flesh’s corruption

A test of

Mind-body problem

We want mind

We get body

We want body

We get memory

In a cloud

Uploaded filed away

Not by us

Whose memories they

Are but by

Apple to whom

I pay each

Month to keep

My photos safe

Of bodies not

Souls even if

Eyes offer windows

To experience / not

Its concept / words

Fail / meaning too

Much not enough

Body smells bad

Soul is non-allergenic

You are neither

Now peripatetic friend

How do I

Talk to you

Without them / here

Scams: Elegy 23

 

Scams

The pendulum between

Rage and forgiveness

Selina calls it

Someone wrote asking

For money for

The killer’s psychiatric

Exam (which is

Private in Samoa)

Someone else asked

For money for

The killer’s daughter

Who didn’t have

One / I said

No / I cannot

Forgiveness is gift

Not offered in

Exchange for money

The grifter still

Grifts from prison

Says she’ll plead

Guilty then not

Demands release on

Bail wants wants

Wants wants wants

She gave us grief

Our daily bread

How do we

Offer it back

This heart appliance

I remember Sina

Calling to tell

Me about her

First Nigerian scam

Letter before we

Knew what they

Were something about

A prince a

Bank account her

Money to save

Someone in distress

She didn’t fall

For that good

Story but when

She entered Sia’s

Door she did

Not come out

Again / alive

Disremembering you: Elegy 22

 

Disremembering you

how grieving a death makes

bird song

less

Or the only song

More than siren

Than weed eater

Than mower though

Mowing is death’s

Artifice before renewal

Buddha-like lightened

If not en-

Another stone dropped

By Selina / news

More horrible than /

As if death

Were not enough

Grief not enough

Without shock / “the

Gory scene” / further

Unveiled in which

Sina’s lost—again--

To details to

How we tell

Stories as rise

And fall emphasis

On fall on

Failure to resolve

The scene in

Sweetness why could

We not have

Stopped you where

You stood that moment

Before entering death’s

Theater your host

A parasite armed

With planned rage

And we chorus

Members sunk in

Amber talking talking

Never moving toward

Because we’re stuck

In time’s passage

Proust’s PTSD madeleine

Memory carves us

Up eats itself

Then leaves us

Dis-memoried and blank

(opening by Deborah Meadows, from “Dear Henry”)

Talking Trees: Elegy 21

Talking trees

Bug encasing itself

In its own spit--

Thinking as body

Armor mind shield

Feeling glued to

Highway like a kitten

Shivering under tires

No one stopping

Save the man

In a photo

Kitten on shoulder

I give you mine

To cry on

There must be

Tears where you

Are, Sina, echoing

Like puddle drops

In Hereafter’s suburbs

Neatly set trees

Dropping leaves of

Bark no yawp

In whatever language

You now speak

I am tree

You are tree

We negotiate through

Our roots / synapses

Tethered / pass on

No pass back

"Bug..." Verse 1.4 of Jigme Linpa's Revelations of Ever-present Good,

trans. Ken McLeod

Reading from Meditations (2019-2020)

https://tinyurl.com/5yv7ry32

Video of my reading from Meditations

 

From the Talmud: Elegy 20

From the Talmud

 

You are not

obligated to complete

the work but neither

are you free

to abandon it.

What work to

Talk to you

Game of telephone

Without the phone

Just me mis-

Understanding myself

As words smack

Into walls like

Tortoises who never

Stop their rowing

My flippers flip

Ignoring the obstacle

Death deals us

Power out after

The storm / Hone

Meaning “sweet soft”

Hurricane force winds

“Make perfect / complete”

In Hindi / “sharpen”

As in a knife

Sweet soft knife

A kind ethics

Cut from corrupt

Papaya’s too-sweet flesh

Campaign season: Elegy 19

Campaign season

I read your

Mother poems over

And over again

Knowing the entanglements

Of grief: you

My parents Marie

Not cardboard stand-ins

But actual absences

Opening the computer

This morning I

Saw your photographs

Smiling at me

Grown more thin

Susceptible to bronchitis

Toll of peripatetic

Travels in planes

Thinking to separate

Yourself from colleague

From niece from

Intimate opportunists one

Of whom—it seems--

Would kill you

So open so

Inclined to serve

You exited that

Door / opened another

Entered the staging

Of your death

Keep your naivete

A friend advised

When I got

Burned but was

It worth it

To stay in

Such unguarded space

Your intrepid self

Rowing past lens’s

Reach / I want

To talk to

You now about

The politics of joy!

Eyes: Elegy 18

Eyes

You were over

The moon when

Obama was elected

Now only moon

Watches you watching

The DNC from

Hereaftersville / need no

Screen no Stevie Wonder

No candidate’s son

To weep unmediated tears

Only form of honesty

That’s left / staged

As mockery this

Morning / to see

Compassion’s blade

In my father’s

Eyes too no static

A kind clarity

Clarion to us who

See in the human

Way / image after

Image all the way

Down like turtles

Holding earth for

You to look

Back from your

Moist eyes I

Miss them all

My Bodhissatva kin

Word stones: Elegy 17

 

Word stones

You wrote, Stones

Pass away, but

Words last forever.

You, completely lost

Completely found in

Names / sound stones

Stolpersteine / Stein’s

Stones words laid

Across pages like

Bricks though places

Aren’t bricks are

More diaphanous sound

(A stone’s light)

A feeling before

Emotion before act

Even a set stone

Gets acted on

When we look

Not to step

On it / another

Genocide blooms red

Under shattered concrete

Each soul a stone

Like yours thrown

Across sea water

Skipping like a child

Like your eyes

When you laughed

At the human

Comedy before it

Curdled like milk

Or office politics

 

Quoted words from "Dear Mom (IV)"

seedlings 7, Jerrold Shiroma, Editor

Sina's Garden: Elegy 16

Sina’s garden

You imagined your

Reborn mother at 2

Making mud pies

The love of eyes

That imagined her

Not in the life she

Lived with you

Fresh starts always

Include mud pies

And bloody knees

An early unawareness

Of our being

Before the mysteries

Start / you were

Sheltered by dakinis

Until the end

Did they go

On strike or leave

On holy vacations

Vacate meaning to

Empty out like

Tourists on their own

Time / though emptiness

Isn’t quite it

Except as spirit-

Mulch / tendrils

Of new growth

Peeping out / a child’s

Eye glistening curious

As a dahlia

Blossom and you

Tending your mother’s

Garden / reborn in

A place I don’t

See on any map

Though my heart’s GPS

Sends occasional pings

Lilith's odd morning

"Hey Jarod!" I yell to my favorite _Lilith Walks_ "character"; "like my shirt?" It's my new somewhat psychedelic Harris / Walz teeshirt. "I love that guy!" he says back. "Other guy is an ass plug. And Trump? OMG, I keep telling my mother what an awful person he is, but my aunty used to own Heald College, and Kamala shut that one down. I want a "Ballz to the Walz" shirt, myself," he adds, amid a hail of references to podcasts and bursts of the f-word. "They're calling him Tampon Tim! But I want my intermediate school daughter to have supplies in the school bathroom." Goes on a bit about evangelicals and why they go for Trump (one belief system makes them susceptible to another.) Leans over to chat with Lilith. He's vaping, and I wonder about the smell. "Oh, it's Susan taking random pictures of me again," he protests. Gets in his car. At the stop sign, he pulls up, yelling, "What the fuuuu?" Across Hui Iwa, we see a lot of police tape, a cop, a guy from DOT. Of course I cross the street. A large patch of the fence is rolled up on the ground. In the culvert, a truck rests, upside down, beside the pig hunter contraption that now sits in shallow water. Happened at 4 a.m. No one found in the truck, which is spilling out with clothes and shoes. "The guy was being chased," a woman with her excited little boy said. "We think he ran." 

 

I asked for Uncle John outside the Temple, where several huge tour buses were parked, with more coming in (backwards, as required). "I want to show him my shirt," I explained. Well, there he was behind me, talking to a guy in a wrong-colored Dodgers cap in a truck. "Oh no!" he says. "Well, I'm going down with the ship; Trump's my man." I said Trump had nothing to say, so he said Harris had nothing to say. Four years of this awful economy. "She gave an economic speech yesterday," I said, to silence. "But she's been in charge for four years!" Anyway, we fist bumped and Lilith and I walked to the top of the cemetery, met a young couple from Buffalo, NY (talked grain elevators and the old train station), and then returned.

 

"See you tomorrow!" John shouted from the crowd of tourists. The upside down truck still in the culvert, a lone policeman kept watch over the yellow tape. Someone would know what to do.

 

Failed story / Elegy 15

 

A failed story is a poem

Buddhist stories end

With what we

Had thought would

Happen not happening

Teacher angered by

Dirty dishes left

In communal sink

Realizes she left

Them there / wisdom

Of embarrassment /

Your story ends

But why it ends

Where it ends

Or began where

It began can’t

Be told / narrator’s

Unreliable and you’re

Dead / need to know

Basis when there’s

Nothing to know

Is all tease

She in jail on five

Counts, including theft

Of your car

Which she drove

To a friend’s

House afterward

A count is number

But not plot

At least not

In the sense

Of story making

Sense of arc

Flat-lined unreadable

To whom story

Is told cannot

Tell it back

Do not ask

It tells for thee

Asterism sale on _I and Eucalyptus_

 

https://asterismbooks.com/product/i-and-eucalyptus-susan-m-schultz

 

I'm thrilled with how the book turned out. Lavender Ink in New Orleans (Bill Lavender's press) did a wonderful job with the text and full-page color photographs of the tree.

 

Or, get straight from the press: https://www.lavenderink.org/site/announcements/meet-eucalyptus/?v=76cb0a18730b

Shoulder blade: Elegy 14

 

Shoulder Blade

How do we talk

To our dead /

Like trauma they

Interrupt us

Our daily routine

Not ritual but

Remorse instead

Of recovery / we’d

Enjoy making memes

This election year

Deft take-downs

Of shark-fearing

He-man / his under

ling who doesn’t

Mean to be mean

To cats / I fell

In a dark hole

Of right wing fantasy

Social media samsara

Can’t get it out of

My head / knife

In my shoulder blade

Is metaphor (I

Tell my daughter)

Or displaced wound

Taken from or for you

Whose written voice

Sits in Signal

Like an egg

To be cracked

When I want

To be strong

Then shatters into

White and yolk

Fore-conversation

As we are

Now after it

Watching your killer on vimeo / Elegy 13

 

Watching Your Killer on Vimeo

I watch her inter-

View on tape: VA

She says / is

The space between

Us / living and dead

It comes from

The land / care

Taken of graves

And between us

“VA is everywhere”

Albert Wendt

Writes / after I

Published a book

Whose title offended

You / I visited his

Office (Kuykendall 511)

Asked him what

To do / given the word

That begins with “c”

In English / the author

Also American

Hadn't known

And while Wendt

Understood your concern

Said cultures change

They're remade

By us / as he had done /

Reflected through the lens

She says on Vimeo

Of her perception

Drawn to taboo

Tattoos like those

On her hands

Those who act

I can imagine

Rewind that image

Back to her theater

Back to her

Teaching / back to

Her her her her her her

Ten minutes up

Return a stranger

And more than

Strange that you

Can’t hear my

Words / bent screen

On wood house

God is ugly

Elizabeth writes / so

We won’t identify

With him / we

Who are beautiful

As her words

Were until time

Ends / we tend

Your memory grave

Ashes to ashes

Word upon word

Upon word upon

Unmortared rock

 

 

with thanks to Elizabeth Robinson

Life in Hawai`i: Kamala style

 

Life in Hawai`i: when I wear my "[comma] la" teeshirt, people think it reads "[`okina] la." So let's hear it for `OKINA-LA for president! 

 

Life in Hawai`i, part 2. When you wear your new lime green tee shirt that reads, "you think you / just / fell out of a / coconut tree" and two people who read it respond, "that happened to me when I was a kid." 

 

[K Harris quotes her mother saying this to her, with the following conclusion: "You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you."]

 

The Lost Word: Elegy 12

The Lost Word

Several times in

The night I looked

For the word

“Succulent” / failed

To find it / though I’d

Heard it yesterday

Seen one with green

Springs near the cat /

Mr. Mu / it’s

Not that the past

Is so far away

But the present

Is so close

You move in

Both directions / I pull

My bucket up /

The sodden ferns

Frizzy on trees

Hanging like dreads

Another kind of

Reverence to read

Not as landscape

Reflects us but

As we do it

Droplet to droplet

First here / then

There / transparent

Metronome with

No sense of time

At the border: Elegy 11

At the border

Not your killer

But the woman

Who killed you

Pleads innocent to the court

Admitted that she

--No, the devil--

Used the knife

As if the devil

Were other /

Migrant who crosses

Borders / getting all

The free stuff

Trucked back south

The knife cut you

Open like pages

Of a book

You wanted to read

A carriage driver in cahoots

With demon-logic

Kindly stopped for you

The event plays again

In my ribs’ cell block

I think you’d feel for

Her / tangled in samsara

Of self and colonialism

Who knows which

Jealous of you

Dear borderless pilgrim

Ka`u Desert Hike: Elegy 10

 

Ka`u Desert Hike

You know how happy I am /

Sina / when I pump my arm /

Asking truckers to honk

Their deep horns

At my Harris sign

I waved it for you

Yesterday on Highway 11

By the orchid place

With older ladies

Many with cats

I sense you’re pleased

Out there beyond bardo

Walls in whatever form

You now assume

I’ll look for you

The desert hides nothing

But blue and yellow lava

'Ōhi'a with chipped bark

Maybe to catch the rain

Two dead white trees

Embracing where Jill

And I walked with her

GPS / nice to know

Where you are / can’t

Follow footprints

Of travelers overcome

By ash / many lack toes

Some tiny / one child

Foot in soft brown

Set ash / we put our

Boot prints down

Not for History

But to notice on

Our return / the quick

Histories of us /

The record of you

A print / I return to read

Your elegy to your

Mother / I ask your

Daughter for a photo /

Not knowing which

Or why looking at it

Leaves such a trace