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