Hawaii Day Ten

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From sea to air: my helicopter ride!
As if to see Kauai from every side,
We'd booked this tour back home. Now it was come,
I wasn't sure another motor's hum
Transporting other windows with my face
Would get me any closer to this place
On this my last day here. Was scenery
Indeed the only path to poetry?
Was this what I expected when I flew,
Muse to my breast, across the bounding blue
To find myself upon these islands? Art,
It seems, should something more to do with heart.
My blog has missed the mark; something was lost;
I'm decoyed down a glamour overglossed:
Another couplet for a mountain green --
Another paean to an ocean scene --
Another guided tour -- what would it mean?
There should be something deeper...some way in,
Some spirit from the places we have been
Attaching a connection at the soul
Instead of to the endless camera roll.
Alas, I sing vacations -- don't I, Muse?
Given us much, much less to us refuse;
We step on commerce's conveyor belt
Where only the exchange of cash is felt,
Are funneled through a gulped economy
Whose moment's morsel the reality
That keeps the airplanes flying, spigots on,
The mountains green, the green upon the lawn,
The dreams upon the posters on the wall
That fringe the mental verge from which we fall,
Chasing a shadow, kicking once the wheel
To turn the great machine of how we feel,
And what we know, and do, here in our time --
And O, across the age Cook strikes the rhyme:
"Pacific Ocean." Sure. Give us a beach,
My friend, and shadows of the clubs' upreach
Behind our living backs. I almost wish.
The last vacation day serves a cold dish.

Sara was sick. I mean, some years ago,
From helicopters, and she wouldn't go.
So once again, I took the car alone
This early morning, while the bright sun shone,
Unsettled too at separateness again,
This anniversary as yet -- but then,
Ahead of me there lurked a fascination
Older than Hawaii or vacation:
Helicopters. Always I had dreamed --
From childhood or younger, so it seemed --
Of taking to the air in such a ship
(Of flying it myself!)...The chances slip
Like years through fingers, still I never had,
The dream discarded as a youthful fad,
Test too expensive for a thing untrue.
But give vacation finances their due:
Thrown in with the Hawaiian avalanche,
The chopper ride expenses had a chance.
Add nervousness, then, to my troubled state,
Exhuming finally a half-buried fate:
What for Kauai no longer had a need
Was deeper opening a dormant seed,
The fond chimera of the youthful fad
Now bodied at the airport helipad,
An insect black and bubbled in the sun,
Doors open for me! Not quite having fun,
I join five others where we group and sit
And fumble through the life preserver kit
In roaring backwash at the verge of field.
And then into the bubble we are sealed.
The weird machine, close-quartered, noisy, steel,
When fastened shut on me comes sudden real,
And I, who seasick laughed at yesterday,
Happy and prancing in the open spray,
Feels stomach quiver in this leather seat
Close to my neighbor's breath in glassy heat.
The headphones wrap me, tinny volume high,
And then, with bare a nudge, we start to fly.

Forget all questions! This -- is where it's at!
Like magic we detach the grassy flat
And pop into the sky a weightless inch,
Rove backward, turning, agile as a finch
That flicks its wings across the summer lawn,
Tilt once, and from the pull of Earth are gone.
Sickness forgotten: almost with a blow
My spirit claims my body, keen to go!
I tell you what -- all grandeurs of Kauai
That for the hour passed our windows by
Are second to that swift and silent pass
Twenty feet backward, one inch from the grass.
You had me there! My childhood dreams of flying,
Stepping to the air by simply trying,
Áll were real, were just like this. I'm right --
The helicopter's formed for my delight.
The airport drops away as if we shrug
Ourselves above the brown and emerald rug,
Select a height and lounge there, looking round,
Then aim up at a mountain, take a bound,
And clear the beetling ridge with just a breeze
Between our bubble and the tips of trees,
Go floating down the ridgeline o'er a trail
As if just kicked the soil here to sail,
Drift sideways o'er the plunging valley green,
Then plunge ourselves, pursuing what we've seen,
A shining glint, a hidden waterfall;
We hover there, then skirt the mighty wall
Of some sheer cliff extending high above,
A window-washer free to swing and move
Or toss the job entire, head to sea,
Wish-drifting to whatever sights agree.
The landscapes of Kauai, all crinkled up
In sunlit verdant hump and shadowed cup,
Were lovely but of secondary thrill
To this our fairy navigating skill.
Flitting we touched on all the herald host,
Waimea, Kalalau, Napali Coast,
But better liked than they, I must confess,
Were the lost tracts of roadless wilderness
That spread their virgin mysteries below
In swards and swales of greenery, aglow
As if illumined from a light beneath.
From sharkback flanges of the mountain teeth
To little waterfalls' sequestered pools
Inset in velvet like translucent jewels,
The land was empty, waiting, like a set
Of everything we seek, or must forget.
The pilot's voice, deadpan, close in our ear,
Names all the features as we sally near;
At times I slide the earphones from my head,
Preferring helicopter noise instead,
The lovely whining roar of magic flight
That best accompanies this sort of sight.
And soon our island circle is complete;
Lihue and the airport scenes repeat,
Rising so gently toward us, like we trod
An aery stairway curving to the sod,
And finally took the last step to the grass
As if relenting once again to mass.
O thank you, helicopter pilot John,
Reviving dreams to base new dreams upon
(Of flying it myself!); with body buoyant,
Almost with a spirit clairovoyant,
Hálf as if I'd bounce again to sky,
I skipped the red-dirt soil of Kauai
Back to the car, and the vacation day,
With half an eye somewhere further away.






Sara had spent the morning at the beach,
Speed-sketching all attractions within reach
Of her fast-flying pencil and black book
(Alternative that often drew a look
Of wistful admiration from the hordes
In busy service to their camera lords
When, at some railing, gulping vistas raw,
They'd see her whet her older tools and draw).
Her journey's art she also meant to post
By daily blog, and likewise now was lost,
Marooned by vanished Internet with mine
In shared aesthetic of a private line.

Reunioned now (still aery in my feet),
We stopped again at Puka Dog to eat
(Hi Amy!), then returned to Poipu strand
For one last snorkel o'er the golden sand.
The sea was stronger, and with boiling roar
The coiling surf embarriered the shore;
We walked a sandbar out into the bay
That served to swing the flanking swells its way;
The crests clapped on the bar, as, ankle-deep,
The turquiose water made an upward leap
Chest-high and higher, trapping in pure glee
A girl who posed, applauded by the sea.
But notwithstanding all this blow and spray,
The swimmers frolicked in their sunny play,
And so we donned our snorkels and went in.
But soon we found, to Sara's great chagrin,
As outward through the surge we tried to ford,
That buoyancy becomes a doubled sword:
Salt-water lifted, tumbled all about,
Hard to get in, and harder to get out,
She lay, rolled and defeated, in the wash
That o'er the quicksand surged its fizzing slosh.
The meanwhile, underwater, all was blurred
In clouds of dark and swirling sand upstirred.
And so, kissing and giggling with love,
We beat retreated to our favored cove
In shelter of the reef. Here we could swim
And see, tucked close against their rocky rim,
The brilliant fish. A while we swam together,
Buffeted by underwater weather,
Pointing in our silence to a flash
Of luminescent flagships' sudden dash,
To follow in a hasty kicking tour
Between the sunken rocks and sandy floor;
Encountering a better, branching off,
And finally, standing with a sniff and cough
To clear the mask, and finding with a start
She and myself a hundred yards apart.

Three turtles, feeding almost at the shore,
Oblivious to all gathered to adore --
Some standing in the shallows, eyes in air,
Some mask-down, under-element to share
(Myself afloat, but helpless to the thrust
Back and then at them, threatening our trust) --
Became the final sigil of the beach.
Ocean and air: with equal home in each,
To swim, to bask, in patient liesure ply
The intermixing layers of Kauai,
The sacred turtles measure out the me,
And from our shared littoral family
Dispatch us home with silent knowing smile,
Acolytes of the mystic giving Isle.

And now, the final evening of our trip:
Back at the Hyatt, well-dressed, hip to hip,
We stroll the pathways to our waiting table
Ín a restaurant like a children's fable:
"Tidepools" -- built out over a lagoon
Reflecting tiki torch and waxing moon;
Thatched roof and bamboo, open at the sides,
Cool flagstone floor with privacy divides,
Our table nestled at the very brink
Where koi fish watch us as we click our drink,
Or throw a frothing fit abreast our feet
When we drop sourdough gobs for them to eat.



Romantic setting for our capping night!
The more as we grow tasty-toasting tight;
Adventure not of vistas, art, or food
But of a satisfied relaxing mood.
Aye, Camb, I see you circling in the dark
Above the strike of our romantic spark --
Hawaii! And we're married twenty years,
And to a twenty more we clink our cheers --
Again the moment lifts from the vacation,
Weathervane of wider celebration,
Póem not a part of, so you fly
And pierce the private brightness cannot try.
Something still higher, there you winged wait,
But strata here of Sara's and my fate;
Tomorrow I'll rejoin you, but for now
Me and my sweetie share a strengthened vow,
Let history and commerce serve us this,
And share a well-fed, sunburned Island kiss.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Nine (Part II)

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The drive back down and East, quick turn-around,
And, reunited, again Westward bound,
The one Kauaiian road learning our car.
This time we didn't echo quite as far,
Just to Waimea's "Shrimp Station" for lunch
(Shrimp tacos dripping juice with joyous munch
Upon the picnic tables by the street,
Where quiet Waimea held a red-dust heat),
Then East again, same road, back to the port:
Turn right, at once the island comes up short
And meets the Ocean's liberating blue.
We gathered with the others of our crew.

To sea! The catamaran leaps the meter
Ás it skiis the rollers sent to greet her:
Barefoot, all our footwear stacked on shore,
The inboard engines throbbing through the floor,
Some dozen of us tourists breast the bounce,
Torn by the wind and staggered by the jounce,
Of speeding freedom into the terrific
Open prairie of the blue Pacific!
"Lucky Lady" -- so we call our craft --
Is forty feet or so from fore to aft:
A central cabin rumbling low and dry
With beverage service (yes, and free Mai Tai),
An open cockpit stern with sunken thwarts,
Twin narrow bows that pound to the reports
Of shattered waves gulfing back sheets of spray --
Now port, now starboard -- soaking the gangway
That runs wide matching aisles down the sides --
The spot of choice for all who love such rides.
Offshore we have a clear blue sunlit day;
The cloudhead and the island fall away,
Presenting mountain profiles to our view,
Exchanging and receding. We pursue
A steady course a mile off the beach,
Just close enough to see, almost in reach,
Towns, houses, roads, familiars of the land,
People and turtles lounging on the strand,
While still suggesting, in the smoky rise
Of distant mountain mysteries to my eyes,
The virgin apparition Cook had seen
When first he raised its great and dreadful green.

This voyage is for play: we sip our drinks,
We throttle down for bottlenose hi-jinks,
We hail a paddle-boarder with his daughter
(Wildlife upon the azure water),
Happily we speed through spray and light...
While gradually the shoreline grows in height.
Subtle like shadows comes the chilling change,
And suddenly we're in a mountain range:
Napali Coast! Goal of the dinner cruise,
A brutal flex of bare and rugged thews,
The greenery and beaches of the Isle
Forgotten for a fell and fortress style
Composed of pitted, raw and rearing rocks,
Sheer from the sea in massive rusted blocks
That claw the sky with razor-taloned towers,
Flying buttresses of godless powers.
Nichelike arid valleys squeeze between,
By instant's passing angle only seen,
Crevasses of unfathomable bone
Holding the shadowed secrecy of stone
Where hermits could hide blissful, or the spears
Of tribal ambush fasten in your fears.



This quarter of Kauai's unreached by road,
No humans here to join its dry erode
Save those who boat around or come on foot
To blink and shudder at the mountains' root.
Here empty surf meets blinded rock in booms
That carve out unexpected little rooms --
A tiny shrine of beach and watered bush
Locked in beneath the towers' stony crush,
Or sea caves, giant mouseholes in the cliff
That arch immense and ragged o'er our skiff
As we poke closely in on shattered fizz.
They call this "scenic"; I suppose it is,
And so obligingly we smile and stare
And aim our cameras upwards into air,
Belittling the mountains to a frame
On which we can impose a human name.
And if the bald immensity of shapes
Insinuates a terror to our gapes,
Quick as we can, we come to Kalalau
(I'm back, though looking from the bottom now):
The greatest valley, and a bowl of green
That makes a reassuring tourist scene.

We pause for dinner here. In evening light,
Warm, gently bobbing in the breezes slight,
They serve a two-course heated meal afloat,
And homey smells of chicken fill the boat.
Like astronauts importing our abundance,
Hére we can relax in our redundance,
Grín at desolation like a park,
And toast the view with Mai Tais -- what a lark!
As if by premonition, I eat small,
And don't accept the offered alcohol.
And sure enough, soon as we turn for home
The rollers start to blow a little foam,
And as the evening strips away to black
The Ocean mounts a furious attack.
Wind at our head, swells hurtled at our bow,
Through cold and soaking sprays our engines plow,
While ever grows the underlying scale
Of climbs and plunges, servants to the gale:
Up, rising in a corkscrew to the sill
Of an immense onrushing liquid hill,
Then toppled to the dark and gulfing trough,
With pounding impact like to shake us off,
And up again, no slackening of speed,
We and the rollers endless in our need,
While far off, drunken on our starboard beam,
Tilts back and forth the last pink sunset gleam.
I'm raised on boats, and, like the light-foot crew,
I thrilled to the adventure through and through,
Knowing the storm not serious, took fun
In every upward shoot and downward stun;
I even clambered forward to the nose,
Tip of our starboard bow, to take the blows
Full force, cold hands clamped hard upon the railing,
Lifted from my feet with each impaling
Thrust we made into the coming wall!
But Sara didn't feel that way at all.
I joined her in the general tourist huddle
Sternwards, crowded in a cockpit muddle;
Stíff she sat with inward focused eye,
Giving her dinner's balance every try,
And not alone was she. A silence reigned
Among the well-fed fellows, and a pained
Contemplative intensity, while roared
The engines and the wind, and throbbed the board,
The fiberglass rebounding to each bash,
That threw our clinging clothes another dash.
A gentle Japanese man took first prize,
And just in time my sweetie closed her eyes,
Seeing him grope a bucket from the pile
And bring it quick to his inverted smile.
The contemplation deepened all around,
As new importance framed that plastic mound
Of small white buckets shown to us before;
The crew, alert and lively on the floor,
Swapped buckets for him and employed a hose
To clean it overboard, and back it goes
Upon the pile (awfully, on top),
And now the cascade starts and cannot stop.
Two, three, another, bending glumly double,
Every failure stirring further trouble;
"Kéep your eyes closed," I to Sara hiss,
But she is further isolate than this,
Deep in a meditation. I don't know
How far afield her spirit had to go,
But while I held her in my warming arm
She cast upon herself a fearsome charm
And stabilized her system through the sport
Of spouting passengers 'til we reached port.
Three cheers for this the triumph of her will!
Wan from her trial, happy with her skill,
We claimed our shoes upon the fastened Earth
And wandered inland from the dreadful berth.

Back to our car, and back home to our bed
Our day of double voyages was led,
Combining at the end to shared delight
In dryness, warmth, solidity, and night.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Nine (Part 1)

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My hiking day at last! Read, hiking morning,
All the project hastened by the warning
Deadline of returning for our cruise
By one o'clock. So, not an hour to lose:
At dawn I took the rental car alone --
The first vacation outing on my own --
And sunrise found me speeding to the West,
Then up the canyon country toward the crest
Of Kauai's inland highlands, and the trails
That hovered in my mind like holy grails.
A hard-core hiker? No. How then explain
The din of this agenda in my brain,
Predating e'en the trip, when I would look
With hungry romance through my travel book,
Or online sites, for hiking on Kauai?
Mute feelings but suggest the reasons why --
A need to meet the island face-to-face,
Reunion with a lost and promised place,
A sense that only inward, off the road,
Would presence on the island be bestowed...

Now flies the Hyundai in long upward swerves
On empty morning two-lane Alpine curves
Through drying woods. Relaxed behind the wheel,
With narrowed eyes I take the road by feel,
Aware of canyon vistas to the side
But focused on the smooth ascending ride,
The higher goal, the trailhead and the clock,
And it's with something of a scenic shock
When what I thought was canyon doubles down
And opens up that monster of renown:
Waimea! Here I have to stop and stare.
The lookout platform seems to float in air
In dessicated silence, while below
The ramparts of a giants' city grow
In ruined slabs and pillars from the pit,
Massive red castles crumbling into it
Down haze-dim miles, a deep and ancient throne
Of cataclysmic power gone to stone.



A quick gaze only, then I'm on my way,
At war against the fast-advancing day.
The road is long; already I'm behind;
I drive and drive but still I cannot find
The sign that marks my trailhead. In my eyes
Already mine is half a compromise;
The best and famous canyon trails set by
As taking too much time to fully try,
I've picked the Waipoo Falls trail, short and near,
But hours and curves run on, and soon, I fear,
I won't have time to hike even Waipoo.
At last the trailhead lurches into view,
And finally I can park my car. Now to it!
But, alas, as I'm about to do it,
Starting in along a wide dirt road,
My water-heavy pack a happy load,
I double-check just what the guidebook said.
This isn't yet the Waipoo Falls trailhead:
The head is found a mile further in
Down the dirt road. Reluctant to begin
By hiking dull preliminary woods,
I walk back to the car to chase the goods.
And now I nose the glossy Hyundai down
A steep and rutted funnel of dun-brown,
Moguled and potholed "road," choosing to scorn
The wooden sign whose chiseled letters warn,
"4-wheel drive only, slippery when wet." Why,
This road is clearly firm enough, and dry!
I'll just go to the trailhead, then I'll stop.
However, now the road begins to drop
At an alarming pitch, and lurching round
The pits and boulders, oft with scraping sound,
I start to ponder getting up again,
Especially if, God forbid, the rain
Comes on while I'm off hiking. Which it could!
The sky looks whitish through the masking wood.
Ah, finally here's a trailhead: not Waipoo,
The "Black Pipe Trail"; well, it will have to do.
Mercy of mercies, here's some level grass
Where I can park so others cars can pass
And, more importantly, turn mine about,
A first requirement of getting out.

I left the silver Hyundai at its ease,
Incongruous among the hanging trees,
And finally hit a trail! Nervous and tight,
Through falling forests jailing out the light,
I marched into the heartland of Kauai,
Not knowing where I was, or really why.
The woods were thick and pretty, but the slope
Increasing made my fast and hearty lope
Aware that hours would double coming back.
With one eye on my watch, hefting my pack,
I angled downward, weighing time and skill --
Then met a hiker coming back uphill.
An elder woodsman, native, fast of tread;
I stopped and asked him what I'd find ahead.
He rambled out a tortured roving tale
Of climbs and clambers o'er long miles of trail,
But said just down this hill I'd find a creek
With ancient waterworks I ought to seek.
We parted, and the echoed plashing sound
Guided me through the trunks to lower ground,
Where, sure enough, a sweet and shallow stream
Pooled in an open glade and warm sunbeam.
And here, lost in the forest, miles from Man,
An old cement canal still curving ran,
Guiding its flume through long-forgotten locks
Half-overgrown beneath tall birch and rocks.
The stream and pool in purling freedom spilled
Beside the system man had thought to build:
Two different waterways, the one to shun
This quiet clearing basking in the sun,
With warm white boulders by the shallow bank,
Green woods with only rain and light to thank,
And shunt its captive cargo through the shade
Entrenched in purposes that Man had made.
An artifact of bygone irrigation
Built to serve King Sugar's vast plantation,
Now an industry that's left Kauai,
But still the old machine drains highlands dry,
Almost a part of nature, mystery
Of wilderness and human history
Entwined and shared. The secrets of the Isle,
Presented as I picnicked, made me smile
And feel an understanding oddly earned.
I sat there for a while, then returned.



My little hike (though sweaty up the climb)
Had left me unexpected extra time,
So, having bounced the Hyundai back to road --
Successfully: no dings (at least, that showed) --
I turned my silver prow on upward to the top,
With freedom now to savor every stop.
This proved just one: the best, all books allow,
The lookout from the cliffs of Kalalau!
The road ends here; we've met the farther coast,
But at the highest ridge the Isle can boast,
The summit of the walls of Napali.
From here the land goes plunging to the sea,
Which, viewed again from this triumphant height,
Extends blue brilliance dazzling in the light
Forever to the edges of the world.
Between, like ripples in a flag unfurled
Before the ocean wind, the pleated cliff
Cuts out a sheer and ragged wall, as if
Kauai was one immense pistachio cake
And God a single piece had deigned to take.
The great green valley echoed with the snarl
Of helicopters' tiny flitting quarrel
Mosquitolike within, while the big breeze
Off clean Pacific spaces stirred the trees
Below the lookout lawn. In awe we gazed,
Tourists to kings by mountain vistas raised,
And clicked our little cameras, sadly knowing
Wé were more than what they would be showing
Later in the valleys of our lives.
Only with you, Muse, something here survives.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Eight

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"All years ago." For me it's up to weeks,
A mist before the vision as it seeks
To paint the image of the living day
As if we still were living it that way.
Ah, Camb! My daily blogging plan once broken,
Days rush in between the moments spoken.
Fínd me, long returned, now back at home,
Almost forgetting how it felt to roam,
The recrudescent habits closing in,
Pressing the days of our adventure thin
Like photos, closed in covers on the shelf,
That backwards speed an ever-former self.
New car, a week of flu...the rogue events
Come jostling for space and precedence
And suddenly a month has stunned my blog
And I'm left squinting through this veil of fog,
Not just to solve myself upon Kauai,
But catch from clouded flight your friendly eye.

Vacations -- O, not only must they end,
But on the sense of ending half-depend,
And e'en within them, in the island sun,
The bliss of being knows the moments run,
Pleasures half-shadowed with the lovely pain
Of nevermore to come your way again:
So fly our cameras, spears to time impale,
But fixing bits of past, never prevail
To hold the future and its dying light,
Where everything is precious to the sight.

Perhaps these thoughts creep in because our tour,
Northbound on Kauai's loop road, round the shore,
That morning took a back seat to our talk.
My poem hesitates this scene to stalk;
Would leap it unrecorded; simply say,
We wrestled with our wider looping way,
And popped the bubble of the near and now
To grip the issues of the when and how --
What to come home to, whither we were bound,
Our mothers' deaths, the change. Topics profound,
And meantime, out the window, mountains green
Retreated to a half-uncolored scene,
And ocean, straight and steady on our right,
Belied a circling motion to the light
As round the little island wound the road.
But Kauai intervened its garden goad:
Wailua Falls arrested talk and car
To reimpose the wonders where we are.

A strange, half-thwarted day of memories
Designed to cameras more than people please.
I almost didn't want a day of driving,
Insulated from the great arriving
Calling still and vaguely from the Isle,
In taunting echoes down each windowed mile;
What's more, the loop road, holding to the sea
And pinning us to the periphery,
Broke vistas of unprecedented glory
Inward, to the great forbidden story
Át the heart, where wild and roadless heights
Piled verdant cliffs toward mist-concealed delights.
Each roadside overlook and pullout pass
Was like a diorama walled in glass:
Ecstatic celebration of the heart,
Impossible to touch, reduced to art,
'Til all Kauai's epochal scenery
Became a sort of grand machinery.
Oh, fie my churlish mood. 'Twas much to love,
'Twas pleasure in the very drive to move,
To cover ground, to see the land, explore
Each treasure greater than the one before:
Wailua Falls, dual thunder of the flumes
That rocket from the ledge in snowy plumes
Abreast our car, dive down the deeping hole
Where sun-baked stratas ring the rocky bowl;
Opaekaa Falls, hid on the other side,
Hangs silver down its breast, a waiting bride;
Wailua River overlook, between,
Sees sleeping waters wend through dreams of green,
Here, fertile meadows picnic toward the sea,
There, jungle mountains club romantically,
The total panorama spread below
Heartbreaking in its Indian tableau;
Now Kilauea Lighthouse, giant's thumb
By ocean's swells and mistrals battered dumb,
Extends its brave white beacon like a station
Over an unceasing detonation;
Walk the point, the wind consumes our words,
The wheeling skies are whitecapped with wild birds,
The sundered cliffcoasts march into a haze
Of sun-dimmed blast and dark prismatic sprays;
(Quiet and inland, guidebooks highly rate
The Kilauea Market's luncheon plate;
Our appetites aroused, we try the fish
And revel in the gourmet-level dish);
The Princeville turnout-view of Hanalei!
(Don't blame me if I rhyme it the wrong way.)
Here drivers cry like helpless kittens treed in
Bare sequioas overlooking Eden:
Paddied taro fields like checkered lakes
With little farms in coconut-palm brakes,
Fall sudden back to upward valleyed slopes
That skyward climb in velvet emerald gropes
To cloud-hid peaks faint hung with waterfalls --
The mightiest of Kauai's siren calls.



Now down from the hermetic tourist ridge,
We entered Hanalei by one-lane bridge,
And here the tiny street, soft country land,
Brought all the homey grandeur close to hand.
In evening light the massive mountain flanks
Came cuddling in their cozy amber ranks
Sheer to the edge of the road. Pocket lawns
Made secret sunlit coves between great yawns
Of rearing hillsides; jungle hid the coast,
And houses tiptoed high on peering post,
Two stories open underneath. A little town,
Hidden away, with whimsies all its own,
Was Hanalei, and made me almost quiver,
Wondering how--but--if--O, could I live here?
Hardly thought, a thumber on the road
With curly hair and weathered backpack load
Applied my brakes. We offered him a ride,
And, soon as he was comfortable inside,
He told his story: he was two days here,
By one-way ticket, armed with luck and cheer,
To stake his residence and find his fate.
Already he'd had run-ins grim and great,
Tough locals, elder welcomes, one old friend --
Now waiting somewhere up around the bend --
He'd know it when he saw it -- here it was!
And thanked us for the lift, doubly because
"No tourists pick up hitchhikers." So blessed,
We bid goodbye and wandered on, confessed
And answered, as by some attending force;
Thus, wryly laughing, kept our looping course.

The road doesn't quite loop, but makes a C,
And ends at Haena Beach, where sleepily
We parked and took a little Hyundai nap.
Then would have walked, except my sandal strap
Broke at that moment. Hobbled by the luck,
We couldn't track the "wet cave," and were stuck
Exploring sadly just a local cave,
That helpfully right off the roadway gave.
And that was the day. Sara took the wheel,
And drove us back. Three times my naked heel
I tried re-soling at a passing shop,
But though a million visions of flip-flop
Hung on the walls (I'm not a flip-flop lad),
No single pair of sandals could be had.
A message from my siren, irked at last?
The evening came, and darkness followed fast.
The Poipu Shopping Village burger place
Was fine for dinner: tired, face to face,
We totaled up our scenic overload,
And thanked the genius of the island road.
And truly, Camb, it all was to my liking;
Still, tomorrow finally I'd go hiking!

--Matt

Hawaii Day Seven

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Our condo home was handsome, airy, bright:
Glass lanai doors aflood with morning light,
While wooden shutters ushered through the breeze
Together with the rustlings of palm trees.
Our white and private third-floor balcony
O'erlooked neat lawns and villas toward the sea --
The "Kiahuna Outrigger Plantation,"
Manicured and fit to its location
Fronting on the beaches of Poipu,
But backing on some pretty country too.
Indoors, we had a tidy kitchenette,
A King-size bed, and high-speed Internet!
(Alas, my laptop balked at logging on;
The final straw, my goal of blogging gone.)
Our Number 16 villa held the rear;
We missed the sound of surf, but never fear:
I ran to fetch a nothing from the car
And Kauai mountains beckoned from afar,
Green velvet biceps flexing up a frame
For hinted vistas whispering my name.

The morning brought no flag in forward force;
I was afire to be about our course,
Wherever it might be, I didn't care,
So long as I could breathe Kauaiian air,
Explore the country, greet those magic hills,
Connect somehow with all the promised thrills
I couldn't see, but sensed, as down a trail,
An invitation through a parting veil.
But Sara (smart!) took the first morning slow,
Learning the map and plotting where to go
Throughout our week -- a necessary squeeze
Between our scheduled activities
(A dinner cruise, a helicopter ride, and, last,
An evening Féte to celebrate our past.)
The first two days alone were fully free,
With all the island loop to drive and see:
Good plan to pause, although I chafed to sit,
To groom the time and make the features fit.

Outbound at last! We honored first our host,
Exploring Poipu and the Southern coast:
Drove up through meadows to Koloa town,
The sea air fresh and clean, our windows down --
No more Big Island voggy smell or haze,
Blue skies decanted purest sunny days
With clear-cut bumper clouds of snowy white
And temperate trades that kissed with cool delight
The tropic skin. And everywhere is green!
No razor lava rivers to be seen,
Just soft red dirt abloom with fertile grasses,
Verdancy from coast to mountain passes,
Forests, fields, high peaks, all deep and lush,
From tamest condo lawns to wildest bush.
The country roads were small, speed 25,
A friend to gawking round you as you drive.
Ah, Muse! The errands of our day were few;
We touristed the towns as tourists do,
And each must get a mention in my song,
But through them, run a thread of music strong,
A background soaring, firm and sweet and high,
For this enchanted emerald land, Kauai!

In search of breakfast, first we made our way
To Kalaheo, finding their café,
A local favorite, tasty, homey, cute,
And worthy of a Travelogue's repute.

Scant miles onward, tending to the West,
We found, deserted on its day of rest,
The town of Hanapepe. Silence reigned
Upon a red-dirt strip that seemed unchanged,
Its shack-like homes in picturesque decay
Preserving a Hawaiian yesterday
In stillness, heat, and woods. The shops were shut;
We walked their "swinging bridge" over the cut
(A narrow river brooding still and brown),
And bought papayas on the edge of town
From a closed shack with dollar-payment box,
Then peeled away, back to the world of clocks
And running time, a mile down the road.

From there, we hit the beach! The bright sand glowed,
And from the rim of azure waterworld
The crystal hillocks rose and rolled and curled
In crushing softness and in silky hiss
Upon the smile of beach their fulsome kiss;
The clustered palms, like asterisks on stems,
Fringed the near headlands, while, like giant gems,
The cliff-cut mountains held the faded distance.
Here, released from all adult resistance,
Straight into the booming surf we dove,
Submitting to the bliss of Nature's love,
Embraced and tumbled, as by father's arms
Whose roughhouse bundling both wins and warms,
A power universal in its sway
Expressed in perfect trust and laughing play.
All up and down the beach, real children run,
Shrieking with joy, between the surf and sun,
And at their side, the ranks of every age,
Distinctions lost of Senator or sage,
Enjoy the same experience the same
As those newly arrived to join the game.
A lesson no philosophy could teach
Embodied here: who doesn't love a beach?

The windy sky turned grey, then quickly black,
And we were subject to a squall's attack,
Chased underneath a camp-roof with a crowd
As stinging rains blew sideways, whistling loud,
Then just as quickly blew off on its way,
Trailing a misty skirt across the Bay,
And sunlight ruled as tranquil as before --
A genuine Hawaiian-style downpour.

Our map gave Salt Pond Beach a snorkel star;
It wasn't so, and, drying in the car,
We drove instead to find the "Spouting Horn,"
A lip of ledge by heaving waters torn,
Where one small blowhole, set back from the coast,
With every slugging swell shoots out a ghost
Of milky-gowned and human-walking spray
Thirty feet tall at times, fading away
With hollow howlings and great sucking sounds
As into backwash all of it rebounds.
Great fun, and tourists leaned behind the rail,
Trying their best, often to no avail,
To time the moment of the overwhelm
And get the apparition down on film.



Sun-scalded now and hungry, back we strayed,
In quest of dinner and some indoor shade,
To Poipu Shopping Village. Here my Log
Must pause to honor humble "Puka Dog,"
A mall-hole restaurant that we both adored.
The hot dog is its one and only board,
But bratty-plump and juicy, sauced with flavors
Tasty in their bright Hawaiian savors,
Lillikoi and guava-spicy relish
Filling up a meaty bun: mmm, delish!
Honor also goes to Amy there,
The counter-girl with energy to spare,
Who with her brilliant smile made us smile too,
And tipped us off to snorkel at Poipu.

But first we visited a higher station
Fór our special dinner reservation,
"Hyatt Grand Resort," just down the road.
Amid its opulence-on-overload,
Still dressed in shorts and sandals, we were seized
By a tuxedo'd usher, who was pleased
To sit us down (quite hidden from the hall)
And show us menus from the heavy, tall
And gilded book of restaurants they command.
Each offered us a different wonderland;
We picked the one most aura'd of romance,
And booked our table three days in advance.

The sun was setting, and at my beseech
We hastened from the Hyatt to the beach,
Arriving with the sun abreast the sea
And all the evening like a tapestry.
At Poipu now, in light limpid and still
That seemed with liquid gold the air to fill,
The amber sandbar cupped in by a reef
That hushed the sapphire surf to scalloped leaf,
And other swimmers quietly afloat,
With many telltale snorkel-tubes to note,
We donned our masks and slipped into the scene
As if into a travel magazine.
O contrary desires, sea or sky,
Immerse with angels or uplift the eye
To glorious immolation of the day
In purpling clouds and pink descending ray,
Or swim with Sara's limbs dimly afar,
Or stand beside her, seeing the first star?
At last a fellow snorkeler called us down
To where a turtle of the sea, dun-brown,
In tilted hover just beneath the wave
Nosed gently in and round his rocky cave,
Nor minding our attentions, lost in grace,
Weightless of fin and dignified of face,
Pursued his great slow business till the light
Diminished into underwater night
And we stood up.

That night we drank champagne
Recumbent on our lanai, in a rain,
Almost, of starshine from the dizzied crush
Of galaxies above, as island-lush
Across the vault of moonless ocean sky
As emerald is below upon Kauai.


--Matt

Hawaii: Interlude

.

Soft, Camb, and pause. Our Travellers are asleep,
So let us break the rush of things external,
Take this quiet time and touch the kernel --
Sara and myself. A subject deep:
This trip, you know, was part defiant leap
From vales of death to find the green and vernal
Source of love, lost in its pledge eternal
Somewhere up the slippery, sere and steep
Canyon of years, a promise left to keep.

And now? How this our anniversary,
Half-finished, feels a warming nursery,
Transforming grief to fragile shoots of art,
Here and her own, like sketched and cursory
Pathways from sunny nature to the heart,
An inward greening, and an upward start.

--Matt

Hawaii Day Six

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Today we island-hopped. A strange sensation,
Having airplane flights in mid-vacation.
Áll the rush and stress of journey ended,
Farewells to the places we'd befriended:
Hotel restaurant breakfast, then we sat
Beside a koi pond at the laundromat;
Our just-dry clothes we bustled into bags,
We rustled up our tickets and our tags
And for the last time rode our rental car
Across the lava fields, not very far,
To Kona airport, where we first came in --
But yet our trip was newly to begin.
A skateboard camber upward, West and North,
And hardly had our aircraft sallied forth
Than down it swung to drop us on Kauai
(By pause in Honolulu). As the sky
Went silver, pink, and settled into dark,
As if by pardon, we could disembark
Into a new adventure, all-new place,
Redoubled romance and true Traveller's grace.



The headlights of our second rental car
Show road, and little else of where we are
As through the shadowed foliage we proceed,
Guided by tourist map too small to read.
And though I swear and clench the steering wheel,
Insult the useless road signs, O I feel,
In every breath of clean Pacific air
That through the open windows stirs my hair,
In every hint of hills that upward loom
Like chunks of deeper night in darker bloom
Against the stars, a welcome and a thrill,
Excitement near too strong for sitting still,
A call, a song, my spirit in reply --
Yes, even now I know I love Kauai!
My smiling Sara understands my mood,
Discharged in verbal energetic flood
Of hot impatience at the balky roads
(And nothing is the matter with the roads);
We find our condo village easily,
With tiki torches down the lane to see
Illuminated hints of a lagoon
In a soft jungle. Registered, and soon
Directed to our cabin for the night,
At once, with Sara, I must needs take flight
And lead her down the pathway toward the shore:
In darkness, drawn on by the breathing roar
And open black ahead, we slip between
The bark and glow of indoor TV screen
In condo hamlets, and at last we reach
The open arc of empty moonless beach.

And O, the constellations crowd the sky
As barefoot down the seamless sand we fly;
And O, the surf engulfs our travel pants
As, laughing, in and out we daring dance;
My Sara, O, I write this, and we seem
Forever in our first Kauaian dream!

--Matt