The Futility of Gravestones

 

I walked past the Maluhia Cemetery, 

Pondering its aged state, where many gravestones 

Had worn so much that the names of the buried 

     Have faded away. 

All flowers left there had turned to dust decades 

Ago. What remained of these people besides 

What might still be below, bones and teeth, 

     Monuments to death 

Not life? Maluhia signifies solemn peace 

And stillness in Hawaiian. It is now an irony. 

When these graves were interred in the sheltering 

     Kalihi Vallley 

They rested in sacred stillness, but now urban 

Life speeds in its daily pace so we barely notice 

The site where those forgotten souls lie nameless 

     In their unmarked tombs. 

Which is why I will not trust my legacy 

To stones no matter how durable they may be 

But to a life lived in a way that is etched 

     On those I have touched.

His Final Gift

My parents had married three days after Valentine’s Day 

In 1945. Sixty –six years later my mother carried 

Bunches of fresh, bright freesias to my father’s 

    Grave in Oroville. 

He had aspired to be a farmer all his life. In his old age, 

He pulled himself up for a loving act of cultivation 

Sowing a dozen bulbs under the bedroom window 

    Where they both still slept 

Together as they had for most of sixty years. 

Soon, his memory of any of their time withered 

And though he was moved away, the bulbs stayed 

    Lost in Dad’s past dream. 

He had told no one why he planted them there. Mom 

Had forgotten about them as they lay dormant 

In Natomas’ black soil even as his own memory 

    Quietly slipped away 

With no trace of colors. The freesias waited for light, 

Then exactly one year after my father died, not a few 

Robust pioneers burst through the Natomas' crust sharing

    Love's persistence.

Fool's Love

 

He murmured to her that her hands were perfect. 

Recoiling, she rejected him as a fool on that subject 

Didn’t he see how short and ragged her nails were? 

So brittle, they wouldn’t grow long like the pearls 

That decorated the fingers of those women 

On television, plus her thumbs were stumps. 

Besides, her hair was too dry and her legs too fat. 

No man who ignored all of those many faults 

Was anything but foolish, so she married another 

Whom she thought she loved even though he never 

Praised any part of her and now as while lingering 

Over her dishwater she gazed at her aging fingers 

Now wrinkled, and reflected on the old suitor: 

What would it have been like to love a fool?

Kimiko's Doll

“She looks like she’s in pain.” Is what I said 

The first time I saw her photograph. 

My aunt, who had brought the picture 

With her from Japan, laughed in agreement. 

The lady in the picture was Kimiko, 

My grandfather’s second wife. My aunt 

Had only just met her. He had married her 

After he returned to Japan, after my grandmother 

Had died, after he realized that he still needed 

A woman to serve his tea hot and mend the socks 

 He wore out walking to his fishing spot 

Every day. When unusually persistent rains 

Kept him from fishing all winter, He died. 

Kimiko died soon after him due 

To the meaningless she then confronted, 

But not before I met her when I was in Kebara 

To say my first farewells to my ancestry. 

She would not let me go that easily. 

She gave me an elaborate doll, a geisha, 

That must have cost half her monthly income. 

The doll holds a warrior’s helmet, as if readying 

To place it over a samurai’s top-knot, 

Perhaps the same way that Kimiko presented 

My grandfather’s tackle box each day 

Before he battled the fish. I can imagine 

Her chopping off the heads of the fish 

For the evening meal, musing over what 

It might have been like for her male ancestors 

To ride over rivers toward war, leaving her 

Grandmother’s mother behind to tend dolls. 

I have kept that doll, now in my daughter’s 

Room. Jamie likes it, even though Kimiko died

Twenty years before she was born. It tells 

Her that her female ancestors were warriors 

At heart and that she has every reason to be the same.

Kaneohe Down

My wife’s father was fond of Hawai`i’s birds,

Scattering seeds for the mejiro and sparrows 

At the mall or the beach, rescuing mynah birds 

Ensnared in those plastic loops they manufacture 

To hold cans, training the doves in his neighborhood 

To cross his threshold and become his house guests 

For a few moments of bird seed and curious cooing. 

After he left us last March, taking flight in a night, 

Diane would still see his strut in old Filipino men 

Disembarking from the bus in Mililani or hear him 

Clucking among the murmurings of the old Japanese 

Men within his old flock at Ala Moana Shopping Center, 

All the while he lay locked underneath the ground. 

So when she found his old hair brush a full year 

Later, she realized one way to release him to the sky. 

We took the brush to Ala Moana Beach, plucked 

It clean and set his feathers in the ocean to drift 

In the surf below the pigeons and the white egrets 

Wheeling above the reef, just below the stars.

A Sign of Age

I close my eyes and feel my body rove 

Beyond me. It is something old, something 

Uncomfortable surrounding me. It moves 

By tremors created at my fringes 

When I stand, eyes closed, I almost topple, 

Would topple if I did not open my eyes 

To stand. It is as if my eyes operate 

As my only anchors to this life, 

Shut them permanently and I would die, 

Yet, in sleep, I still dream of youth, moving 

Myself in all directions without my eyes 

Opened. It is not perchance like dying 

And I would not die while my mind can go 

No matter how much my body may slow.

For Don Culver Wherever You Are

I met him in the fifth grade, standing

On two crutches. He was little, like me 

Maybe that’s what binded us. Or the crutches. 

I never did ask him why he needed them 

And he could not see mine. I did not know why 

He liked me and I did not know why Mike Costa 

Did not like me, only that one day after school 

Mike tried to pick a fight with me. Donnie stood 

Between us, wrested him to the ground. It ended 

When Mike realized who he was fighting. 

I thanked Donnie as warmly as I could. Despite 

That, I did not see Donnie after the fifth grade 

Until four years later as freshmen in high school. 

 I never did ask him what happened to the crutches. 

What held him up now seemed to be his use 

Of a lot of foul language. I tolerated that 

Because I was somewhat stronger now, yet 

He knew how much I disliked such profanity. 

He seemed to swear more at me than anyone 

And when I asked him to stop, he laughed, 

Warmly, but it made me cold, as if a fight 

Was waiting. I began to walk away, slowly, 

He said he was sorry, but something had broken. 

Now I look for him inside everyone I meet.