A Note to My Wife on Our Daughters' Second Birthday

Our children were standing in their play-pen

When Jamie tugged and lifted the bottom of Chelsea’s

Night dress. What I imagined was a scene

At Chelsea’s wedding in twenty years as her sister

Adjusts her bridal train and calms

Her with the memory of their first day

In school when, hand in hand, they flew

With only one lunch bag between them,

Which they shared that noon without bothering

To call you at home.

When toddlers bend their faces into frowns

Or lift them into smiles, it draws no lines

Upon their skin that I can see, so when I hold

Chelsea in my arms, in a blanket finer

Than eider down, I only imagine

The corner of her eyes crinkling with laughter

As she and Jamie reminisce over coffee,

Talking about the way you had gotten

Them to do their eighth grade science

Project on the life cycle of the Hawaiian goose.

Ah, Diane, we are already old for our daughters’

Eyes. Why do my own eyes see them

So far beyond us, even while we are waiting

To cast a thousand  more diapers from the nest?

Aina

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it…Our delight in the sunshine on the deep bladed grass today might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love. - Mary Ann Evans Cross (George Eliott)

The Hawaiians have love of this land

From which they sprung, limbs of dark coral

Trunks of cooled lava, eyes glistening

With olivine, a green crystal they call “Pele’s Tears.”

It is not coral, or lava or tears that I love,

But Diane, my wife, whose childhood

Perched on this island, perceiving the tropical grass,

The scraping cliffs, the beaches as close as neighbors;

Absorbing the ancient Hawaiian love

For the “aina” while my childhood hovered

Over California, perceiving vast mountains

From vast distances, equally distant beaches,

The close spring grasses dying to gold

Each summer, and hawks storming the clouds.

I only know how much I love that land

When I return to Sacramento to see

The yellow poppies listing on the side

Of freeway ramps, the levees curling alongside

The rivers watering the Central Valley,

Just the thought of giant redwoods growing

On those distant mountains, unperceived. 

There lies my aina, bounded on the side

Facing Hawai`i, by the same ocean

That separates me from it.  The barrier

Of miles is not an obstacle, for what grew

In California was something that has spread

Fertile and heavily ripe, to a new place

Where my children learn a new aina.

Angels

Repetition is only a means of making the border visible.

-       Milan Kundera

-       The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

In March we could only see the line that drew

A border between our daughters

Within that quivering image of life.

It was more like a series of vague

Dots than a line, in this,

Their second month.

Ultrasound waves had penetrated

The quiet of their minute dreams,

As we uncertain parents anxiously peered

At the television screen for signs

Of movement, of malformation;

A monthly ritual not unlike

A Delphic visit, except

Our oracle was science.

By May the line was more visibly

A membrane, stretched between

Two lives, yet still as evanescent

As angel’s wings, cut in cross

Section by a sonic scalpel.

The babies stretched and yawned

Seeming more human than before.

The last time we saw the line

Was in September just before

It was winnowed aside,

Strong in its barrier

Keeping lives distinct

Maintaining the illusion that flesh

And bone are all the border

That life may ever need

Aunt Meriko's Hat

It was silly hat. She knew it.

It was a straw hat with sunglasses

Built into the brim, so you could pull it down

Over your eyes.

Grabbing for my turn to wear it, I knocked

It from my sister’s hand and a gust of wind

Blew it through the car’s window

Onto the freeway.

Freeways are like life, you can’t go

Backwards. You can try to retrace the route,

If you can find the way back, but it will never

Be the same. She knew that.

So she did not try to go back and get

The hat. Being twelve, I felt guilty,

But through a childless, single life of cheer

She has shown me that regret is nothing

More than a lost hat.

Being as One

Can never be. We are too deeply imbedded

In the shells of ourselves.

And it is too immense.

It must be enough to say hello

To a same someone each day;

Someone who will catch you when you are falling

Or else not touch you at all;

Someone who can hear your smallest syllables slur

In life’s undertow and respond

Just to that.

You must have that channel

Through which less than blood but more than time

Flows.

Growing there is that familiarity

That allows the eyes to speak of all

Of the rage that seeps from the submerging

That occurs everywhere else,

Yet speak of all that comfort

That comes from a certainty of being

Able to brush skin upon skin.

Bindings

It was not her rice grown smile, pearly grains

Of teeth, ivory pillows for laughter,

But the sudden blackness of her hair

Rushing to sun braised shoulders;

It was not as the broken song of my grandmother’s

English, but her lips did slip

Certain consonants with echoes

Of Japanese sibilance;

It was not the epicanthic fold of Asian

Lids, but the penetration

Of deep seaweed eyes, as brown and tangy

As cured nori from Osaka

And the way she tilted her head

When she poured her mother’s tea

Sundays after dinner;

That reminded me of the ropes of rice

Straw that my father used

To bind my grandmother’s chadansu

To the back of our old Chevy pickup.

Breathing Together

We brought each other this basket full of sighs,

Each coated with the resins of the May moon

That dripped love upon us. Some of these sighs

Are as small as dust

Nestling on your eyelashes; others explode,

Releasing to passion’s heaven. Here’s a sigh,

Mildew and sorrow growing upon it, damp

As Seattle’s spring.

Another sigh is like an old cat, weary

Of chasing words around the house each Sunday.

Do you recall how empty the basket was

The day we wove it?

We wove ourselves together in its seams.

We have carried this basket for years, adding

Sighs of all shapes and colors, opening

Ourselves to their songs.

Clarity

There are August nights when streams

Of light can pierce the dark so cleanly

That they can illuminate a smallest

Spot very clearly.

She tells me that she wakes such nights to see

My face lit by the moon

And that she studies the hollow

Around my eyes as if that light

Has penetrated enough time

To let her see those lambent dreams

Glimmering upon the first years;

Those dreams which youth pursues

Like Canadian Geese at dusk

Chasing the moon before it lights

The ground below them.

Collection

The greatest gift of a long life may be this collection

I have. I’ve taken it from everyone I’ve ever known:

A limping way of nodding the head, a distinctly nasal twang

In the voice, a wry wrinkling of the skin just outside

The left eye, the way the nose falls into instead of commanding

The upper lip, or an embracing rather than an enclosing

Hand shake. In over 50 years, I have collected thousands

Of these images of people in my memory. When I am in a crowd

I always see them again. Even my parents’ faces appear

In these strangers I see, but only once in a great while.

I see them in the older, kindly faces of people in Hawaii.

I do not always connect a who, what, when, or where,

But any face I see creates a stirring of recollection. Perhaps

It is our old next door neighbor, Mr. Beard, ambling

Away from his 1936 tractor that he kept running until 1970.

That young man with shoulders as wide as a hallway

Reminds me of Joe Czekela, one of my first students, scratching

His goatee over a fine point of statistics. In that Chinese tourist

Contemplating his Pepsi, I see a hint of Fred Wan, the applied

Mathematician I knew at the University of Washington,

Who developed the theory that led to Tupperware’s push-

Down corrugated lids. I can’t look at anyone without seeing

Someone familiar. I have met everyone in the world.

Commencement

It was a final commencement and the proud

Parents, spouses, friends rang through the Tuthill Court

Holding mylar balloons in celebration

Of the graduates.

As with the colorful students, so eager

To be away, one of these balloons, purple

And gold and shining in the fading sunlight

Escaped from a grasp.

Never built to endure, still it rose, soaring,

Attaining some majesty, into the sky.

The wind pushed it away from us and up and up.

Motionless, it hung

Against a reddening cloud. I set my eyes

On it, determined to follow its voyage

Until I could no longer see it; still, its

Disappearance shocked.

It might as well have never existed, yet

It had been brought here as so vibrant a gift;

But the true gift is the question: What need do

We have of anything

If it cannot persist in our memories for all

It will always mean?

Dana Hootman

I can’t remember his son’s first name

And I am sure his son remembers little

Of him, having been only two when his father

Died very suddenly of a burst

Appendix. The danger to his life

Had been disguised by his large weight.

No one could see the scars he carried,

Stitched by his sentiments and soaked

With the kind of creativity that people

Would not see in so rough a frame, lumber

And sweat fit better than stained glass

And poetry. Where could such loves

End him?  I hope his son will read

This some day, not as an epitaph

Or an elegy, but the removal of disguises.

Departures

For Mark “Jocko” Anderson

There are worse tragedies than dying young.

Of the hundreds who huddled at his funeral

In Placerville 14 years ago, I want not one of them.

I was already close to 40 when he, five years younger

Than me, died while riding his bike, a reckless

Act for him, since we all knew his heart was not

Fit for that kind of stress.  His heart had a limited

Warranty, like the Willie Mays baseball glove

That he wore out pitching in our softball games.

He pitched because he could not exert himself,

So like Charlie Brown, he sighed contentedly

Discontent.  Still he crammed as much life into

His years as anyone I ever knew.  I did not attend

His service because I recalled the last time I saw him;

The last time I checked out of the dormitory.

He was the resident adviser but he let me be the last

To leave in that spring of 1973, telling me only to be sure

All the doors were locked. He knew I wanted to say

Good-bye to each of my friends as they left in that last

Week of spring. I got to help Dan Taylor put his bike

On his car, met George Coker’s father for the first time,

And even got a quick kiss from Karen before she ducked

Out of my life; before I locked that empty mausoleum;

Before I ever thought there would be an epitaph to our time.

Dirty Paws

from “The English Patient”  Michael Ondaatje

But the dog’s paw was a wonder:  the smell of it never suggested dirt.  “It’s a cathedral.”

Her father had said, so and so’s garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen--

A concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.

I smell my own paws, the ones that dipped

And bled into the black soil of my father’s

Farm in the Sacramento Valley

In which we grew sorghum and winter wheat

Before the paths took me to Seattle’s glacier sifted

Earth where my hands pushed aside rocks

To plant the tulip bulbs so my infant

Daughters would be greeted by brightness

In their early springs.  Now the bouquet

On my skin smells of the deeply red

Dirt of Hawai`i which has covered

All but a hint of lands past.  In two jars

I keep small specimens of my past

So that one day I can water them and rub the mud

On my hands again, breathe deeply of the gardens

Where I worshipped the things that grew

Of my hands, smell my paws.

Donut Holes

On certain Saturdays I go to Lynnwood

To eat donuts at Winchell’s, I try to write

Something poetic between decaf coffee

And chocolate glazed bites.

There are always young boys alone with fathers:

Sons clamber over yellows stools while their dads

Juggle orange juice, maple bars and cake donuts

Trying to find seats.

Dads rely on their eyes to steer curious

Versions of Godzilla to their proper place,

If only to finish the orange juice. Eyes are

Very weak leashes.

I try not to smile in secret orange

Conspiracy hearing bubbling followed

By “Jason, please don’t do that.” Then followed by

Some more bubbling.

Somewhere between French Cruller crumbs and napkins

There must be some baker making sons become

Men for their sons again; donuts beatify

Saturday loving.

Echoes

It is getting easier to invoke the echo

Of my Baasan’s chime as she burned incense

In her living room shrine. I used to touch

The chime when all that remained was a gentle

Hum, then I would follow my grandmother’s white

Slippers as she walked down the hall.

I can’t remember anything about that hall.

It was just a passage that did not echo

Like the big bedrooms of my grandparents’ white

House in Richmond, California. In a sense

I lived my childhood in those rooms, Baa’s gentle

Hands always keeping me from touching

Anything of danger. My grandfather’s rare touches

Were as sharp as his distanced voice as he hailed

Us on fishing trips. Yet I could see his gentleness

As he baited hooks, casting them into the Elko

River on our last trip, after Baa died. I lost innocence

Drained like warmth, as I played in the water, my white

Feet shivering. Now as I pass through white

Clouds on my way back there, the plane touches

Down on distant soil. I have smelled incense

At many funerals since I last walked the halls

Of my grandparents’ house. There are no echoes

There for me anymore. I don’t know the gentleman

Who now lives there or whether anyone gently

Tends the young pink roses or bright white

Carnations that helped my grandparents eke out

A living. I think that past is beyond my touch.

The only place where the long halls

Can still be redolent of Japanese incense

Is in my memories as my darkening time assents

To the loss of anything I can even gently

Grasp before my senses bring time to a halt

And the long shafts of age bring me to white

Curtains that after years of many touches

Have attained the dignity of an ecru

Veil. I am not innocent to the touch

Of these shrouded halls for I have seen the white

Tread of my grandparents echo there before me, gently.