Category: Travel

KAUAI LIGHT SCARS

Audio Recordings, Nature, Personal Growth, Relationships, Travel / tagged , / / by

KAUAI LIGHT SCARS

There are two
jagged lines across my palm
where I learned to use an axe at six
and a fingertip crushed by a grader at seven

There are marks made by light
that will remain forever too
here are a few still pink and new

Airport greets with morning rainbow
rare cardinal flies in for our meeting
Chinese screens roof tiles blue
getting to know you

Four hundred gathered
sacredness of Huna and Hula

A Wessel becomes a vessel
power pours through palms again

Flowers wrap the torch lit towers
dancing to Elvis “The night is young
and so are we in blue Hawaii”

Millennium poem a gift to all
little saint Tutu honors with a lei
passing it on is sacred enough
to say what I have to say

Rainbow in the valley of mists
forms a circle with us in the center
Walter the bear gives us a wave
to prove that we are there

A can of spam, coke, chips and thou
alone on a beach at the end of the world

A Poem Before Holland

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A POEM BEFORE HOLLAND

I travel to Holland
on wings of a childhood story
silver skates and finger in a dike

To lands wrestled from an angry sea
a sea that dearly wants them back

Unceasing vigilance to keep the prize
a dark line drawn across their eyes

I see windmills chop the salt wet air
Art and flowers leaping up in faith
behind thin walls

Back to the little boy and the dike again
legal drugs and red lights in the rain

These are a fair and sturdy people
I like them now, and I like how

In a land where children must
so often act as men

They do not pass acts that treat
their men as children

YOU ARE THE U IN HOUSTON TO ME

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YOU ARE THE U IN HOUSTON TO ME

How could I ever leave you love
if you didn’t live in Houston

If it wasn’t for the humid swamp
and the trash along the bayou
how could I say good-bye to you

You know I love you dearly
and it ain’t you that makes me run
but Houston traffic’s far from fun
and every Bubba’s got a gun

Yet even with all of that
and the country’s worst damn air
you know that I’ll keep coming back
as long as you are there

And I’ll keep leaving Houston too
after a muggy smoggy day or two

One of these days I hope you know
I’ll take you with me when I go

SALMON LEAPING

Audio Recordings, Nature, Travel / tagged , , / / by

SALMON LEAPING

In the very center of New Brunswick

Half way between the equator
and the north pole

Half way up the river Mirimichi
Half way between the spawning grounds and
the sea the salmon stop to rest in quiet pools

As you watch, one or two or three
will leap high above the water, twist in the
air and splash down again

I asked the best guide on the river
and the best outfitter too
Why do they jump like that?
They said nobody knew

I suspect it’s all part of something simple
that has always been true
There’s just a lot of joy in doing
what you were born to do

ROBERTA’S WEDDING

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ROBERTA’S WEDDING

When I returned from anywhere by air

Roberta would run
full out across the crowded floor
take a gymnast’s leap ten feet away
and fly through the air into my arms

So pure a show it was of joy and love
so affirming of the goodness of all life
so full of youth’s unquestioned faith
she would be safely caught and held

that travelers all around

would stand in awe

Today she runs across a crowded floor
and leaps with equal joy
into the arms of another man with
equal trust she will be safely caught and held

And now I see what all those others saw

and I stand back in awe

I’M GLAD I SAW

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I’M GLAD I SAW

The tall old lady in Austin bent over her walker
inching her way across the street to the Driskill

She has a few drinks, listens to Margaret sing
has a few more and starts to sting along

About midnight she stands up to her full six feet
picks up that walker, and it never touches the street

The city crew in Edmonton all leaning on their shovels
watching a pretty girl walk their way
As she passes they pick up their shovels as one man
Turning in chorus line perfection they set them down
and lean on them as they watch her walk away

A blind man stands on a narrow street in Florence
A man comes up behind him, grasps his elbow
points the man’s white cane into traffic
right in front of our hotel car
Brakes screech, he pushes and follows
the blind man across the street
leaving him and us with mouths ajar

Climb out sunsets gain altitude as sun sinks
into the oceans or mountains, one more hour of beauty

A sun dance in the Dakotas, a fire walk in California
sunrise on Oahu, babies smiles, and Northern Lights

And You

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged , , , , / / by

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

It was a Sunday afternoon about a year ago today
I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand I just knew I couldn’t stay

So I took off for Toronto fifteen hundred miles away

Two days of boring meetings,
couldn’t stand to have one more
didn’t know where I needed to be
but it wasn’t here I knew for sure

So I grabbed a train to Windsor
and Detroit which lies next door

Outside spring was springing and calling more and more
and I’d get to see some country that I’d never seen before

Oh, the sheep were soft upon the land
and there was magic in the day
as I sipped my rum and cola
and rhymed couplets all the way

Checked in on Wednesday, wondering what to do
maybe I could try to call a good old friend or two

There was a man I’d met in Banff
just three weeks before
a man of love and wisdom
that I’d like to see once more

And a lady of my poems
that I’d seen just twice before
thirty minutes in an airport
and two hours on the shore

He was busy in a meeting she answered on first try
she had booked off work without knowing why

And when I told her that I was in her town
she said “I’ve got a story and I’ll be right down”

It seems that her grand dad
who had raised her as a child
had died not long ago
and the grief had drove her wild

The family all were fighting for the pennies on his eyes
and there was no one there to hear her heartfelt cries

So she ran from that hospital not knowing what to do
and stood on the highest hill alone in a sky of blue

And loudly called my name
“Please come, please, I need you”

When I asked had she made this cry
and had I come real soon

“Oh it wasn’t very long ago
just Sunday afternoon”