Sally found comfort in writing daily napkins of poetry. Once a published writer and journalist and a lover of books the illness turned print into one more poisonous apple. She could not handle print so could not read. A napkin and a pen worked for her, and in six months she filled a small box, a gift from Turtle Woman a loving and understanding friend, with poems of few words and powerful emotion.
Here are a few of those poems.
Living public
Urban life.
Parking lots paved paradise.
Still the palms sway in the afternoon breeze.
`Aole fruit. Cut to avoid killing a haole from land where snow drifts in the same global afternoon breeze.
Homeless—houseless nomads sleep legally in ALOHA STATE licensed vehicle.
Beware the witching hour.
BONG! 6:01 sleeping, you are citable by law.
Living public the maimed and injured catch the eye, draw heavy hands and big billed brother.
Peck. Peck.
Bang, bang.
Slam, Slam.
Cabang.
Security in the parking lots. Log times in. Log times out.
Not every one of the folk on foot, bicycle seat and 4-wheels lives under roof with walls and windows.
The WHY STORY not the same for the flock.
How many rove because the manicured neighborhoods get routine legal poisons and chemicals to “look good” yet keep on killing long after the bugs have mutated and learned to love the poison.
Living public the lacquer on the Ugly Betty lookalike’s morning do singes my nostrils on its way to my brain cells. Beauty and fashion first. My birthright to breath … unaccounted.
Coffee House Retreat
Out of the car into the Morning’s Brew
Co-car camper asleep behind his wheel where I saw him last. Night retreats same for the wanderers on this side of Paradise.
Yeh, clean-shaven haole man with your shirt tucked oh so neat…snap back…the cat’s asleep with his everything surrounding him. A problem? Or just shaken aware.
Ness-ism
Just enough.
Enough to.
To sustain.
Sustain the light.
Lightness.
Ness-ism.
Ism without.
Without attachment.
Attachment.
Blank
Her sweet old face held me—
One face stood out among the many.
My parking lot vigil watching momona young hapa couple squeeze out of their car.
Smooth globe faces, flesh stretch the 3X tee shirt, the stretchy flowered pareau.
Plastic bags bulge with stuff pulled from Foodland Shelves.
People-persons push alcohol hand-swiped carts to the beeped open doors of vehicles. Frontiers, FAV3, Astro Vans, TRD off Road.
Your sweet old face held me in the dark, tropical night.
I notice your quilted navy coat enveloping your small frame.
Your smile, your eyes engage two brown haired heads.
Oh, I start to think…family?
Your lips make words.
They pass you.
They blank you out.
You are Kapu…
You sweet one must have uttered the unspeakable.
You with the sweet face, asked.
Help.
In the months when their car, the parking lots and public spaces were home to our dear Sam and Sally one cure became the one that mattered. Night after night when sometimes no WHERE answered their need for a place to rest, Akua … God, the Universe, the Source of All carved out space again and again. Without a roof, or toilet that wasn’t public to The Many, life in the wild offered practical and reliable spiritual connections. The birds, the wind, the sun, the moon, the ocean and the sky anchored themselves to our dear ones so they would remember how loved they are. Fairies came to kiss them. Long-flying birds filled them with the courage to seek comfort in the journey as life.
Hamakua Fairy
They come with the gloaming
Soft like the light tired from a day of bright sun.
They come soft, gentle light.
Tiny fairy, still speaking in tongues.
“Hello”…she moved tenderly alongside.
As close as she could without climbing up.
We watched the beautiful Marsh slip into her night gown.
No words. Silent.
She moved closer—
Caressed my shorts—not touching my leg.
She leaned her curly blond head into me…kissed.
I thank her with a kiss planted first on my fingers, then onto her head.
“What are you doing?” the big dad said.
We knew—fairies come with the gloaming.
Kolea
Long distance flier
Bred to know earth
Feeding on worms—once my mother, once my father?
Spot them in the winter
Stick thin on single legs
Singular
Solitary
Focused
Kualoa, Kaneohe burial mounds, Kailua parking lots, Kapiolani Park, Ehukai Street
Banded, unbanded
Tribes of Golden Plover make their time in paradise count.
Fattened the once sleek stick-legged long fliers transform
Who is the broad black-chested stud outlined in white?
Kolea prepped for Tundra copulation, ground nests, young ones
Plumped for the non-stop journey back.
Tundra-bound Kolea.
Momona with worms.
Warm from the heat of tropic sun.
Kolea aku.
Kolea mai.
Our elderly dears like the long fliers the kolea continue their ocean crossings. The choices they make challenge them individually and as a pair, and the illness complicates things almost daily. The world Sam and Sally find themselves part of poisons not only our brave dears, but the whole human and sentient clan. Great changes will test the resiliency of all in the years to come. A storyteller like me can never remain untouched by the characters she makes up. They are part me and part fantasy. Explanations are reason-bound, a story… well that is something different. What do you think?
Here are a few of those poems.
Living public
Urban life.
Parking lots paved paradise.
Still the palms sway in the afternoon breeze.
`Aole fruit. Cut to avoid killing a haole from land where snow drifts in the same global afternoon breeze.
Homeless—houseless nomads sleep legally in ALOHA STATE licensed vehicle.
Beware the witching hour.
BONG! 6:01 sleeping, you are citable by law.
Living public the maimed and injured catch the eye, draw heavy hands and big billed brother.
Peck. Peck.
Bang, bang.
Slam, Slam.
Cabang.
Security in the parking lots. Log times in. Log times out.
Not every one of the folk on foot, bicycle seat and 4-wheels lives under roof with walls and windows.
The WHY STORY not the same for the flock.
How many rove because the manicured neighborhoods get routine legal poisons and chemicals to “look good” yet keep on killing long after the bugs have mutated and learned to love the poison.
Living public the lacquer on the Ugly Betty lookalike’s morning do singes my nostrils on its way to my brain cells. Beauty and fashion first. My birthright to breath … unaccounted.
Coffee House Retreat
Out of the car into the Morning’s Brew
Co-car camper asleep behind his wheel where I saw him last. Night retreats same for the wanderers on this side of Paradise.
Yeh, clean-shaven haole man with your shirt tucked oh so neat…snap back…the cat’s asleep with his everything surrounding him. A problem? Or just shaken aware.
Ness-ism
Just enough.
Enough to.
To sustain.
Sustain the light.
Lightness.
Ness-ism.
Ism without.
Without attachment.
Attachment.
Blank
Her sweet old face held me—
One face stood out among the many.
My parking lot vigil watching momona young hapa couple squeeze out of their car.
Smooth globe faces, flesh stretch the 3X tee shirt, the stretchy flowered pareau.
Plastic bags bulge with stuff pulled from Foodland Shelves.
People-persons push alcohol hand-swiped carts to the beeped open doors of vehicles. Frontiers, FAV3, Astro Vans, TRD off Road.
Your sweet old face held me in the dark, tropical night.
I notice your quilted navy coat enveloping your small frame.
Your smile, your eyes engage two brown haired heads.
Oh, I start to think…family?
Your lips make words.
They pass you.
They blank you out.
You are Kapu…
You sweet one must have uttered the unspeakable.
You with the sweet face, asked.
Help.
In the months when their car, the parking lots and public spaces were home to our dear Sam and Sally one cure became the one that mattered. Night after night when sometimes no WHERE answered their need for a place to rest, Akua … God, the Universe, the Source of All carved out space again and again. Without a roof, or toilet that wasn’t public to The Many, life in the wild offered practical and reliable spiritual connections. The birds, the wind, the sun, the moon, the ocean and the sky anchored themselves to our dear ones so they would remember how loved they are. Fairies came to kiss them. Long-flying birds filled them with the courage to seek comfort in the journey as life.
Hamakua Fairy
They come with the gloaming
Soft like the light tired from a day of bright sun.
They come soft, gentle light.
Tiny fairy, still speaking in tongues.
“Hello”…she moved tenderly alongside.
As close as she could without climbing up.
We watched the beautiful Marsh slip into her night gown.
No words. Silent.
She moved closer—
Caressed my shorts—not touching my leg.
She leaned her curly blond head into me…kissed.
I thank her with a kiss planted first on my fingers, then onto her head.
“What are you doing?” the big dad said.
We knew—fairies come with the gloaming.
Kolea
Long distance flier
Bred to know earth
Feeding on worms—once my mother, once my father?
Spot them in the winter
Stick thin on single legs
Singular
Solitary
Focused
Kualoa, Kaneohe burial mounds, Kailua parking lots, Kapiolani Park, Ehukai Street
Banded, unbanded
Tribes of Golden Plover make their time in paradise count.
Fattened the once sleek stick-legged long fliers transform
Who is the broad black-chested stud outlined in white?
Kolea prepped for Tundra copulation, ground nests, young ones
Plumped for the non-stop journey back.
Tundra-bound Kolea.
Momona with worms.
Warm from the heat of tropic sun.
Kolea aku.
Kolea mai.
Our elderly dears like the long fliers the kolea continue their ocean crossings. The choices they make challenge them individually and as a pair, and the illness complicates things almost daily. The world Sam and Sally find themselves part of poisons not only our brave dears, but the whole human and sentient clan. Great changes will test the resiliency of all in the years to come. A storyteller like me can never remain untouched by the characters she makes up. They are part me and part fantasy. Explanations are reason-bound, a story… well that is something different. What do you think?
“Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we now have acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is part of nature, and his ware is inevitably a war against himself.”-Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring
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