Richard Tillinghast’s thirteenth book of poems, Blue If Only I Could Tell You, came out from White Pine Press in 2022. Richard lives on the Hamakua Coast in Hawaii.
I read a lot of classical Chinese poetry in translation, and it seems to me that if a poet like Tu Fu were living in a remote part of Hawaii today instead of in China back in the 8th century AD, he might write a poem something like this one. I like my poems to evoke a place and then to suggest something less tangible between the lines.
Autumn Comes To Hamakua
Darkness finds us before we’ve finished
our afternoon walk.
We’re guided
by a linger of sun in the seedy grass
of the disused plantation road,
feeling a draft of cool air drifting down the mountain.
The white egrets have flown, high overhead,
back to their nests in the sea cliffs.
Rifle shots in the gulch to our north.
They’re hunting the wild boar
that come down off the slopes of Mauna Kea
to gorge on ripe guavas and avocados
that fall from our trees in the night.
Their ripeness hits the ground with an
unechoing, unexpected thud.
No one hears it.
Just as no one hears the brassy chime
of my old Seikosha wall clock
in the small hours
when the galaxies reach down to us
through the skylight.