Forrest Louise Howe
August 14, 1908 – December 23, 2007
Grandmother, at the end of your life
your mind wandered with the last
of your hundred years of hopes.
You whispered his name,
and James appeared in the heat rising
from your morning cup of coffee.
When you moved, quiet and shuffling,
no one living heard, and
when you spoke, you were hollow as a shell,
resounding with that captured breath of sea.
Your hair, the alabaster bleach of coral,
and your eyes, hidden and too rounded,
like those of a fish,
troubled me.
Grandmother, we carried your ashes in a canoe
and stopped where the old Beach Boys of Honolulu
had drifted into underwater heaven dreams.
That is where we left you, you and your James,
who waited twenty years to go with you.
His ashes tumbling first, and you following him,
captivated,
the way you always had.
Ruminations, 1 A.M.
In the little house by the freeway
the sound of cars passing is like
oceans over the surface of Earth.
I know that I am small
but they echo like God’s voice
speaking to me.
At least these cars passing are not
blocking my parking spot on the street,
forcing me to walk home from
the only spot left,
under the sickly sweet smell of the
mango tree and the sure sight of bird
droppings in the morning.
These cars passing are, perhaps,
people I saw on the beach today.
Or maybe the next man I’ll love.
He is headed home, thinking about
how long it takes to drive from
Waimanalo to Mililani. Maybe,
if he knew me, he wouldn’t have to
go so far.
He could crawl into my bed at night,
where the orange lights of the freeway are
coated by a chocolate darkness.
Where they illuminate the folds
in my blanket, and the curve of my fingers
lying listless, by my thigh.
He could look outside my window at
the puakenikeni and wonder how
God speaks in the rotation of tires
on the dark sparkle of the night road.
The Hamadryad*
His cheeks are warm, fragrant fruits
casting the scent of undiscovered countries,
and his sighing sustains me as I taste
tree sap on his tongue, spicy and sweet.
His fingertips,
split and splinter like bark,
trailing along my collarbone,
left and right and right and left
like wild animals guarding their territory
and when they stop,
oh savagely –
the base of my throat tingles.
I am lost to him,
lost to the brownness of his skin,
left wandering the leafy labyrinth.
*Unlike most other dryads, a hamadryad and its tree couldn’t live without each other. If one was hurt, so was the other, if one died, so did the other.
Damsel, Arise!
(Mark 5:38-42)
You said that you must be soft, somewhere,
at your core,
and though I’d always found you
silent and edgeless,
I suddenly saw the
vanilla moon shimmer
you radiate.
And when you offered me a sip of
your sweet tart martini,
and showed me the length of
your false eyelashes,
the raspberry of your lips
split open.
You said you are too vulnerable,
too exposed to the piercing of stars.
You don’t know,
how brave it is to shine the way you do.
Luna, you are
the sugar and snow blossom of the night,
the dimple on the left side of Jesus’ own face,
A dream girl just awakening.
What Might Be Seen (Working Title)
His hair is probably gray now, not the
black brown I’ve always known. His
hands, his doctor’s hands, could be withering.
Sun spots might be bursting on his shoulders,
or maybe on the side of his face.
If he answered the phone, he might not hear me
say my name. There could be a tumor in
his stomach or arthritis in his joints.
He could be dead already.
I remember my father, the discoverer –
he and I explored California seashores,
and crouched in a fort made of briny driftwood.
We found shells to carry home and pretended
Fourth of July sparklers were cigarettes.
We wandered through the Redwoods and
climbed fallen trees the size of our old RV.
And there were animal figurines –
gorillas and tigers with fearsome teeth.
Silver earrings he brought back from
Peru. The cuckoo clock from Germany
with long, heavy chains
that felt cold running through my fingers.
We used to dance in the kitchen, singing,
“Help me, Rhonda, help, help me, Rhonda.”
At night, he’d always curl up in his chair –
Indian style, or one knee against his chest.
He’d offer me a language lesson,
advice on my model lighthouse,
Or maybe a sip of Heinekin.
That bitter bubble taste.
27 May 2008
Poems, Fall 2007
Distance
I am just a photograph
forever smiling into your eyes.
Just a fond memory,
worth only your half smile and
a finger run down the length
of my two dimensional body.
A girl you once knew.
I imagine how you look at me.
Detached, you muse on the mystery
of two people drawn together
and apart. You wonder
why you don't feel what you felt.
Photographs are not enough.
Love is written with fingers on skin,
by eyes constantly changing their light
in waves of expression.
Love is whispered,
warm,
just by your ear.
Known
When I told you I wanted to be an ocean
I meant that I wanted to be your ocean.
I want to stop,
silent,
so you can touch the silk of my cool blue skin,
and see the pearls I've hidden
in the eel's small cave,
and under the orca's tongue.
Presence
When I wake up,
it's because something you said once
echoed.
And your palm print has never truly faded
from its place on my stomach.
From the moment we stopped
circling each other, watchful and
telling deep secrets with our eyes.
From the moment our unspoken,
before-it-all-begins language
became so audible,
I can still hear it.
At China Walls
Our fingers tightly intertwined,
you led me down inclines and
around jutting stones.
You brought me here.
We walk on a rocky floor,
circling small tide pools with their
quiet anemones,
and we watch the ocean.
It whispers its anguish --
pulsing and pushing and
black and blue.
It slaps and spits,
heartbroken and
exposed
beneath a swollen moon.
From Outside
Doors and all their slamming truths.
The finality of their locking, what hovers when they close,
glimpses of lives we could be living
stolen from their keyholes and the edges
of light that surround them.
Doors and leaving.
Doors and too much privacy and
too much mystery.
If you would open just this one,
I might know it all.
I might have a new place to go.
Summer 2006 Ramblings
May 2, 2006: "Beauty and Words and Meaning and Rambling and Randomness"
Yesterday I wrote about all the words I've never said and how they will fall like gems from my lips and pile up in a Pharaoh's tomb...useless and tainted by the dust of the ages until one day, hundreds of years from now, my words are discovered, restored, deemed worthy and sent all over the world to be placed in glass cases in museums. Cases that are bulletproof and smudged with fingerprints. Maybe then you'll listen to me. Maybe then they'll touch your heart.
The image of words falling like gems stuck. A fairy tale from years ago. Does anyone remember "Diamonds and Toads"? Somewhere deep, deep inside of me, from the time I was three or four or seven or ten, I stored within me the image idea of flowers and diamonds and words all falling freely from the mouth of a beautiful princess. A blessed girl with an unlikely beginning and a penchant for attracting handsome princes who take all your worries away.
May 4, 2006
It's funny how hope fluctuates. I feel like over the last year, my hope in a certain relationship has been like ocean waves. I just learned about them in Oceanography... about how they are formed by the sun and the moon, about how they lap and crash and break on sandy shores. Each month and week and day of the last two years has been a ride on a wave... the slow creeping of hope back onto my skin, the crash of it in a single, breathtaking, amazing moment, and ultimately, it's recession.
No matter how many times my hope-waves hit the shore, the ocean always pulls them back and reclaims them. I think now my hope is a rip-tide. Rushing in a narrow line back to deep water. And I know someday it will inevitably make its way back to me, but I'm thinking that things will be different when that day comes. Maybe my hope will be for a different person or maybe I will be a different person -- one who is more capable of navigating through unpredictable waters.
May 22, 2006: "The World Broke"
You can't read as many books and think as many thoughts as I do and not find yourself here. Where is here? I'm not sure. It's some place between Heaven and Earth. Between knowing and not having the strength to act. And even though you wish you could do something, you're so thrilled and amazed that the possibility even exists. You could die happy just knowing that it's possible to be who you always wanted to be. Or I could, anyway.
Last night, I reread The Alchemist for the tenth time and it made me glow. And on the drive home from work all the words of "Fix You" were from God to me.
Maybe all the beatings a heart takes in a lifetime just serve to make it a more beautiful color. A rainbow of blue and purple bruises. Pretty.
And maybe, if alchemy is true, a heart of iron just needs time to become a heart of gold.
May 28, 2006: "Tonight"
By eight o'clock I felt completely useless. Lonely, with no life to speak of. My answer to all of life's woes? Barnes & Noble bookstore. Otherwise known as my fortress of unwanted solitude. It's lovely, but too cold, and I get depressed when I can't find a book that draws me in. How can it be that none of the thousands of voices written on the billions of pages are speaking to me?
When I finally left the sky was plum-colored and the moon a crescent, a small smile.
At home again, I sat in front of my mirror and looked at my face. Wondered why I bothered with the outfit and the mascara. I wondered at the thoughts going on behind my expressionless face. I tried thinking "GOD," and then, "the devil," to see if anything changed. Nothing.
Someone once told me, when she found out I believe, that she should've known - she could see it in my face. Does she still see it? Or have all the ways I've screwed up made my face like every other one in the crowd?
My ambition is to be ethereal. To be nothing really, except light and air. But I think all I'm ever going to be is a solid, tangible, ugly-gray stone.
I need out.
June 21, 2006:
We see through sea-eyes and black lashes.
We like to let the sun warm our skin.
We battle the waves.
We dance on the shore.
And we crouch down to talk to anemones
(we know magic is real).
We stand as tall as the four palm trees.
The sky is our canvas,
the sun our palette
(and when it gets later we spread it's fire across the sky).
August 29, 2006:
If I were a vandal I would write poems on primly painted business walls. I wouldn't waste the fear of being caught, the pounding of my heart, by scrawling a single word or pseudonym.
If I were a vandal I would paint a landscape, a kiss. I would write out prophecies, hopes, wishes and fears.
If I had the guts to risk getting caught, I would say something important to the world. I would challenge their thoughts or inspire them to be better. I would educate them. I would make a treasure map and send them on a journey.
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