The Book with the Yellow Cover

Excerpt

The Japanese Mason

Without haste, gathering scrape of the trowel, slap of cement, reaching for a block, setting and tapping it level, turning with the wheelbarrow, graceful, sweating, freed of every moment.

Kauai

Sweet Hawaii

Even if somebody did steal my battery, generator, oil cap, visegrips last night, I passed the test to be a taxi driver, and even if I don't have the money to buy a Charley's Taxi shirt, congratulations to me. I'll figure something out. I'll have coffee in Everybody's Bake Shop; I'll write Varve and Finn, tell them I love them, tell them sweet Hawaii going to be our new home.

Honolulu

Bus Stop

14, eyes of a deer
       in bamboo.

16, heavier, going to school
       without her books.

                  King Street
                  Honolulu

For Rob

Handsome Rob. Half the women hate you; the other half will give you anything. Deep in Nam: your buddy shot, tracheotomy. "He died happy," you told me, "he believed I was going to save him." Perhaps he knew he would lie in your arms forever.

Too Big

Listening to Schubert while Great-Aunt Hannah embroiders on the wall, and darkness closes— what have we come to? We've gone wrong, too big to find our way by song, light falling on a face and handkerchief, illumination in the manner of Rembrandt.

Peter's Answer

Little Blue Heron, young, still white, by the north causeway bridge— stick legs, too thin for the swelling body, the visual weight of feathers, stepping slowly in shallow water, long toes trailing limply, then extending, three splayed forward, one back. Brilliant neck curving, poised. Dagger beak the same gray as legs and toes. Why is nature beautiful? The lust for pattern, Peter said. The heron's head rose and twisted, circular eye, light brown, orange rimmed, ancient intelligence asking a different question. I was unmoving, not dangerous. The heron turned to hunt, brush, a cloud above the river.

       New Smyrna Beach,
       Florida

Wally's Poem

Dolphins surge up and under.
Mozart's soprano
stitches the heart together.
Washes for a watercolor.

An ant crosses my foot. Wallace Klitgaard; Epitome of Splendor— ants, sun, one's lot. He typed it himself, showed it to me on the bus 38 years ago. He was grinning, the glad no age that we become, bent to making clumsy prayer.

Morning, Maine Honolulu

Early mist breaking on low tide, mud smell. Ducks, the small birds, the rooster down the road begin to sing the air, the light, the whole enormous chance

grateful as the old people reclaiming Pauahi Street, seeing each other in doorways after the night.

I Would

In 1948 I walked all the way to 14th Street to buy a bow and arrow. It was 30 cents; I had 29.

The woman sold it to me anyway and I was free and happy on Sixth Avenue as any Indian.

If I could find her tonight,
I would keep death far away.

For Anita Bartlett,
Too Late

Why cannot blue be enough? Light in the sky, dark in the sea, the shades between. The green of fields, red clover, buttercups....