Owl’s Head, Maine

In the flight path at water’s edge
The fog killed a woman
Her plane hit that rock over there
Six weeks ago
But she was alone – maybe
It was suicide.

She could have reached
Enlightenment in that cockpit
The fog would have known
If Heaven exists, fog
Is clearly a form of its power
Bridging ocean, plane, bridge
With the sky – now invisible
Like an opening to a time warp
The tiny water particles
Carrying, bouncing light of
Forgotten souls.

My ears hear boats and planes
Birds, an occasional human call
But all I see are the rocks and
Waves at my feet
Sometimes seaweed and a floating bird –
Fog covers what I think is there.

Should I trust my solipsismal ears?
Could these ebbing vibrations
Really be echoes of the past?
I reach forward to a burnt log
Of driftwood, carried through the
Maine inlets to heat s’mores
Or just warm wrinkled toes and fingers.

The wood was dead as the tree
Fell – unheard, unseen
And died again – drowned at sea
A third time as a match
Was held to one end and it caught
Now I break off three parts
For my next charcoal drawings,
Hurling the remainder
I hear a splash that sounds
Like it should as it hits water, but
Invisibly made
By the thick, radiant fog.

Disruption

Seven o’clock sidewalk
Sheung Wan shuffles
Along in riptide waves.

Predicting their paces,
I weave to the beat –
Jay-Z blasting “New York”—

Keeping my glaring lime phoned head
Up, constantly seeking the route after
Long commute; my flat beckons.

Ahead, I spy rhythms unpredictably
Disrupted.
Switches left, carts amuck.

I close in on the scene
Moving straight on, no divergence
In my curiosity driven path.

A brick out
Of place. On the
Sidewalk. Angular.

Space twenty centimeters ahead
Corresponds exactly to its form.
I bend, drop it in.

Didn’t see the old man
Walking with a cane, behind me,
Four paces. Now smiles.

Boom—shuffle, shuffle.
Boom—shuffle, shuffle.
Boom—shuffle, shuffle.
Boom—shuffle, shuffle.