Poems sprinkle out from the spice canister
High yellow vowels, sand scarred s’s,
Antigua blue cocktail beaches, Montserrat
Black rivers of ash, small consonants
And heavy wet k’s with clicks and slides.

The sounds gather round the bonfires
And the dancers, the drummers, the singers,
The storytellers and women of poetry.
Trade winds lift the soft vowels
And thick consonants high into the air.

Words form into imagery and breath,
Into word tones, natural rhythms, themes
Of courage and love, joy and hope,
Greatness and happiness, and somewhere
A rope breaks and the poem sets us free.

The Official Cloud Creator of the Tattoo Garden of Capella
traces ink across the vapors in his fire and brimstone cavern,
colors the clouds greens and shades of blue, adds a touch of ruby
red and lipstick, forms ripe sunset papayas, Mexican yellow,
Waimanalo orange, and fleshy Kapoho, gathers the mangos,
peaches and pears, dips them deep into his molten liquids,
lets them simmer and flame, then opens each lid one after the other,
inks the clouds with color and lets them float into the sky.
Why must a cloud be a shade of gray? he yells, his arms exuberant,
White? Cotton made? Why must the sky be blue? The sun yellow?
Everything should be a sunset even in the brightest part of day.

Spring came early this year,
the robins arrived in February
and the great mulberry tree
began to develop its harvest
before spring thought itself able.
We wondered why so many nests
and so many birds found themselves
in the branches, but it did not matter—
there were enough for all of us
even after the week long rain,
the cold spit, the great frost,
mulberries everywhere,
enough food for a season
a season too soon.

A gentleness in the lavender of touch,
Soft against another, sheets
Organically cool blue with a touch of cloud.
One day Cupid wakes to find his arrows stolen
Enters earth on footed wings.
Angry and puzzled, he finds them
In a park near a grove scattered and dull,
One shaft broken. In the trees he hears joy,
Good wine, beauty, a whisper of lips.
How trite. One lover fingering the palm of another,
A message so secret everyone knows its depth.
Touch comes in color, it’s that easy.
Cupid leaves with everything he has lost
Bits of his anger clinging to the grass
Flowering into large bosoms of rose,
Rosemary, lilies of the field, golden tulips,
A naturalness of water falling from a ledge,
Warm and comforting, trite like a French kiss.

The last thing left is this slab of stone dead
Cold, numbered and lettered rising
From the earth’s brown green grass,
Dead flowers in bright bouquets with plastic
Stems and petals pink, orange,
Torn, faded, wind, rain, saboteurs.
Every now and then someone comes
And comforts the stone, lays a hand across it,
Traces numbers and letters with a finger.
Someone cuts away the weeds, finds new
Pieces of plastic, cleans up the debris.
Here the House of Job. The House of Sisyphus.
The Mansion of Worry and Sometimes Worse.