New Introduction

The poems published here in 2019 are almost entirely poems that have not been published anywhere else. In most cases, I tried to get them published by a leading journal, since I think all of them are worthy, but at this point in my poetry writing career, I no longer have the persistence to keep sending them out to have someone else, often in online journals, approve of them when I can just publish them here.

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 very old age,

He pulled himself up for one last act of cultivation

Sowing a dozen bulbs under the bedroom window

Where he still slept

With my mother as he had for most of sixty years.

Soon after, his memory became only a memory to us

And he no longer slept with his wife. As with dreams

My father had had.

He told no one why he planted them there. My mother

Had forgotten about them as they lay dormant

In Natomas’ black soil even as his own memory

Quickly slipped away

With no trace of color, he freesias sat waiting for light

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

Robust pioneers burst through the Natomas crust thrusting

His persistence of love.

Cloud

I sort through my shoeboxes of photos;

Choose my memories with frenzied care

So that the best images can be scanned

And uploaded to the cloud. Cloud?

Isn't that where angels are supposed to dwell?

I do the same scanning with old letters

Even ones written before my birth

But mostly those that were sent to me

By friends and relations many now dead

Maybe sitting on the cloud to dwell with angels.

Then there are those photos and messages

Already bytten into the internet’s vastness

Yet somehow not yet immortal until

They are sent into my personal cloud

Where my own angels are dwelling

I squeeze my life from small black boxes

To redigitize them into something I can’t see

But I want my life to be scanned into a space

Where it means that I will live forever

A dark black cloud where I can always dwell.

Garden Sculpture

There were a dozen swords of glass--

Excalibured in cement bases

Impervious to would be kings--

Set in Ho’omaluhia ringing

The pathway so that art patrons saw

Flashes of chance light dancing,

Reflecting their invasion of nature

Reflecting their invasion of nature

Flashes of chance light dancing

Caught their vision with twinkled

Images of their own wonder

As they spot exotic plants, exploring

More than beauty penetrating to touch

A space in the mind beyond purchase

Set in a botanical paradise

Where light does not startle muses

But whose beams surprise wanderers

As they burn through leaves and bark

Impressing the suddenness of life

In flashes of chance light dancing,

Reflecting their invasion of nature.

Beatle Villanelle

Romantic songs no longer sell

But what the Beatles did still airs.

Their melody and lyrics fit so well

That it is impossible to tell

That their musical training was spare.

Romantic songs no longer sell

Since cruder lyrics cast a spell

On youths who can’t ever care

Whether melody and lyrics fit so well.

While some musician might be compelled

To seek success, he will scarcely dare

(Since romantic songs no longer sell)

To write a piece in which beauty dwells.

Thus with the jaded public will not share

His melody and lyrics that fit so well.

Though it remove us from our current hell

And this myth that we must beware

That romantic songs no longer sell

Though melody and lyrics fit so well

Surviving Love

It is possible to drown your children in love,

To immerse them so deeply in your caring

That they become oblivious to the deep

   Water of life.

Our daughters learned how to swim, to compete,

Literally, in meets with other children,

So we never felt we were sheltering them

   From reality.

Yet the lessons we had taught left them floating

On the illusion that their parents were, yes,

Immortal. Thus it was with my own parents

   Whose deaths submerged me

In those dreaded waters, sunken in darkness

Of an engulfing mourning. The deepest descent

Of that submergence matched the crest of the love

   They had given me.

So how can we place our daughters in that same

Black trench? It is not a choice any parent

Makes, yet since we have taught our children how to swim

   We hope they’ll survive.

Father's Flowers

Yes, Chelsea,

I will take the school photograph

That you give me for my birthday, as long as you promise

Not to weep in forty years when you open

A cardboard box with crispy strips

Of masking tape on its corners,       lift out

A wrinkled file from which a silverfish scoots

As you open it     to find this photo,

Along with the story you wrote

About the Hawaiian princess; hundreds of drawings

Of little mermaids, your Mom, and landscapes;

Forty-five Father’s Day cards.

I will not have shown these to you in decades

Any more than I would show you any flowers

You’ve given to me after they have withered,

Their aroma escaped with your childhood.

What Endures

He dies weeks short of their anniversary

It would have been sixty-five years that month.

Fifteen years since his mind became liquid from strokes

Draining memory

From he and my mother. Now he has not been home

For two years, his dementia trapping his mind

As the nursing home traps his body. He dies

So far from himself.

It takes her months to ignore the urge to go

To the home where he is no longer planted.

It had taken years to ignore the urge to reach

Out across their bed.

How long had it been since he had lain there?

Long enough that his indelible smell,

Once penetrated to the deepest channels

Of her memory,

No longer linger in the sheets. His towels

Still hold him as she left them on his racks

In the corner of the bathroom. She left

Them to touch what touched

His face every morning after he shaved.

She wondered if there are smells in Heaven.

Can she even doubt it? The best of lives

Must go on somewhere.

Sonnet on Seeing a Woman Smile

She was smiling about a memory she had;

From over fifty years ago of a walk on Sandy Beach

A memory about the end of her childhood

When Ryan had gently touched her face.

Her face has changed since then. Her smile

Is more assured and the look in her eye

Suggests that she hears distant melodies.

The voices of Alfred Apaka and the McGuires

Float through the salty mist, east of Aina Haina.

She had known Ryan for three years, but had thought

Him handsome only since Easter, never an inkling

That he would touch her, or be sent to Korea.

They never found his body. She found a husband

Six years later, lost him to her own memories.

The Last Goodbye

You never know when a goodbye will be the last.

When my father was in his sixties I knew his health

Was not great even though when he shook my hand

In our farewells,

His grip was strong

His hugs were tight.

And he endured through his eighties,

His grip ever lighter.

His hugs ever looser.

When transient ischemic attacks

Decimated his brain with neural debris, his eyes

Lost luster and his grip was so weak that he only waved.

No hugs.

Each time I bade him goodbye I thought it was the last.

He kept fooling me until the real last one.

I thought it was the last because he had not used my name

Once in my visit.

This time I was right.

So when I saw my daughter off at the Honolulu Airport

I did not shake her hand, but gave her a firm hug.

She has seen enough death in her life

That I think she might be wondering about my goodbyes.

All I can do is make sure I hug her tightly each time,

Keep my grip firm.

When Is Home a Dream?

It happens every time I return to Hawai`i,

The place I used to call Home; that place that seeded

My mind with memories so strong they penetrate

All of my nights whether I dream of it or not.

The green slopes of the Koolaus framed my every

Morning, as I took those bright cliffs of green

For granted, little knowing how their slopes were seeping

Into my mind long before I settled in Seattle.

Now, whether I go back to Honolulu for a few days

Or a few weeks, once I get back on the plane,

Get back to what I now call home, the old

Home turns again into a dream as if I had not

Been there at all. Or been there in a dream.

Or perhaps the dream is what is now. Or so it seems.

September Blossoms

I will be enchanted by dry remains

Of a flower lying on our window sill

Or withered in the car’s console

Where Diane had left them forgotten,

Lonely decorations once sought to enhance

That everyday that years of marriage fills

With a sameness that subtly builds

A lassitude that’s aimlessly sustained.

I used to ask her why she did not throw

Those blooms away, their scent long lost

And she would simply shrug, knowing

More about enchantment than I who toss

Away these delicate monuments. She has sown

More than fragrance in sprinkling blossoms

Descending

At 80 my father still growls at his tractor;

Still prowls his field first thing each morning

Just to absorb its light; still descends a levee

He climbs to look over his neighbors crops.

Still sometimes calls me, at 50, “Boy.”

He only called to me by my name once.

Before that, I knew that he knew it, because

He would refer to be by name when he spoke

Proudly of me to others. This one time no one

Else was there to hear him, but me.

It was an evening of my fourteenth year,

Out on the levee road with a ton of sand

Atop our pickup and a flat tire below, perched

Us perilously between oncoming traffic

And a roll down the steep levee bank.

We had to shovel a few hundred pounds

Of sand off, just so the jack could lift

The truck. While I stood sentinel to wave

At drivers coming around the levee’s bend

My father stooped to change the tire.

A loud thump and a sudden slump

Of the truck startled me, but not as much

As a mortal sound in my father’s voice

As his hand got trapped under the wheel

Because of the slipping jack. He yelled,

“Ken, my hand’s caught!” Acting as fast

As I could, I righted the jack, lifted the truck

And freed his hand, but imprisoned my future

With stark memory of my father’s descent

On that levee and hearing my name used in fear.

Afterwards

The morning after he came home from her service

He noticed a strand of her white hair

Upon the sink, where she would once have wiped it clean.

His first impulse was to brush

It into the trash, frail reminder of his loss.

Instead, he located an envelope

Put her hair in it as if he’d mail it to her.

He saw her hairbrush on their dresser

Both black and white hairs were tangled in its bristles.

He gently pulled them out and put them

In an envelope. He found another strand near

The bedstead where she had read each night.

He found a black strand stuck in their kitchen cupboard

Under one of her teacups. Careful

Housekeeper when she was healthier, she’d have been

Aghast at his small discoveries.

He smiled as he imagined her expression

If he’d shown her the envelope; nine

Hairs, saved from a time when she drifted through their house

Now sealed in white, safe from time itself.

A Wedding Farewell

Weddings’ white brilliance radiated joy

As she walked by my side toward her groom

Whose face was bright with that wonder

Of change perched on his eyebrows.

So much light placed me in shadows suited

To the black I wore from toe to neck

As for a funeral and I sensed a dying,

Not then, but later as their jet lofted away

To their honeymoon in Japan. A part

Of me that was a father became extinct,

For everywhere I looked, I no longer found

The tiny rhythm that once kept time

With my pulse, tapping out a tuneless duet

Or a waltz with a small partner. I still danced

With my wife, but there were so many nevers

Lying at me feet, that I could not retrieve

Them before they slipped into a past

Where a little girl once lived with me.