Three Poems
Holding Vigil
Iʻll stick with being human
even if it means shivering
in an almost empty sanctuary
while rain thunders the roof
wind sweeps the pews
but the candle on the altar
refuses to go out.
Itʻs Pentecost and we pray
lightning will strike our hearts
fire will cleanse our minds
and send us into the world
to blaze a path of peace.
And I find solace knowing
such revelation will never come
through VR goggles or Chat GPT.
You could ask Siri to compose
a prayer for the children of Gaza
and Israel nursing on fear,
but what effect would that have
beyond the screen where joy
and grief, wonder and horror
whirl in currents able to spare
a single votive’s flame.
Long Division
Where did the split begin?
Was it in air as glass shattered
and wings tore steel? Or was it
on the street below as thousands
raised their hands skyward as if
they could avert the towers’ fall?
Perhaps it began as the first lash
of wind whipped the skin
of Ponchatrain and the Ninth Ward
filled with water and emptied of people:
some pulled from rooftops,
some rescued by boats bobbing
above their windows, others
retrieved after the storm.
They were found face down,
spinning in a flooded overpass.
But I suspect it was much earlier:
when Cortez toppled Teotihuacan,
when Magellan raised his cross in Cebu,
when Smith surveyed the James,
when Cook kidnapped Kalaniʻōpu’u.
Whatever moment broke us
from the One Tree’s trunk, sent us
branching toward oblivion. May we
change our course once more:
stretch toward daybreak,
bend toward tumbling stream,
sink ourselves back into soil so
we might withstand the storms
weʻve summoned.
The Washing of Feet
My garden where life
delights in life will be lonely
if lizards leave the stones
for cooler climes and birds
abandon Mangoʻs canopy.
After the final leaf has fallen,
the orange cat will choose another
spot to lick her paws in shade.
Without ʻilima blossoms,
the butterflies will flutter off.
And what will be the point
of tending flower beds gone hard?
So much depends upon ridgetop rain
making its long descent into the puʻuwai,
the pumping heart of Oʻahu. Filling
her form until water springs up
between Hālā roots to bathe our feet.
Wendi White, raised in the Adirondack mountains, is a poet and educator now musing among the geckoes and ginger scented ridges of Oʻahu. She earned her MFA from Old Dominion University’s Creative Writing Program in Virginia and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first collection of poems, Turtle Island Rising, is forthcoming. When not at her writing desk, she advises students from across the Asia-Pacific region.