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