A Lasting Mark, Dark and Greasy, on the Ballcap of American Literature

In Kailua, I sit at a table in the garage, folding clothes, oiling tools

and machines, measuring fertilizer one gloved handful at a time,

busy at some task anyway. When eternity comes to mind,

there is no need to measure even a minute. I always simply cannot

remember Friday, January 4, 1946, because I was yet to be born,

and I will recall exactly the same on Thursday, October 23, 2053.

Still, I do recall gazing up at a red-tailed hawk and seeing

for the first time the grim pink sunlight forces through blood

and feathers, but I have forgotten who stood near,

and I’m glad. In later years, with friends now gone, I lay on cool 

black lava in a good night, tracing with a green laser pointer, 

the tail and fins of Delphinus, the smallest constellation, a dolphin 

back-flipping from the Milky Way. And I once feverishly

copied a sentence to quote from a friend’s letter, and in the ruins 

of that hope, realized my friend was quoting me.

The finest pitch of the past is that those days are done, glossed

and polished with loss. The sun today, broad and brilliant, reveals all.

Too much of the world is immaculate of me, but my passage

will surely damage driveways, snap limbs, or crush a bug. Bald

as I am, when I go, I wear a cap, sporting faded logos, but not even I 

care. On this table, left us by others we loved

now gone, with my little black dog at my feet, I fix this or break that,

as trade winds mumble through palm fronds and the abiding

grind of a neighbor’s washing machine. Such din glibly combines

in my ears as silence, ephemeral and eternal. What a fucking glory

is this life. May we all love all we can as long as we can.