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