Revenant

[revenant is the working title... but perhaps it is not the best... this is more a story than a poem, and not a very good one at that... a lot of metaphors re: memory. like everything, this needs work.]

Revenant

He left her during her afternoon nap,
her mouth agape for flies.
His slippers were at the front door waiting
And they were so eager to go somewhere
He barely stepped into one before
the second tried to leapfrog ahead.

There was no destination planned
and no map to get there
but he got himself lost just the same
in no time at all.
He looked down at his slippered feet
accusingly.

It was then that the dog appeared,
an Alaskan huskie with a blue eye
and a yellow eye
and a lolling tongue in between.

And the dog said:
“You lost?”

And he nodded,
not quite recalling that
dogs didn’t usually speak.
But speak this one did,
too much, in fact.

“I’m not lost,” boasted the dog.
“They thought I’d be loyal
and come whenever they called
just because they bought me
and fed me and cleaned up my shit.”
And the dog grinned a yellow grin.

It was fearsome.

“But I know what I am.
Once, somewhere cold and white,
My ancestors hunted caribou in packs.
They never hesitated
to bite anything
full in the throat,
and taste the scream and pulse
of a thing as it ran out in rivers
free.”

The dog looked away,

“They took my true nature for granted.
They thought that because they collared me
and named me,
they owned me.
They thought I would always always
come when they called.”

Then the dog sidled up to him,
licked his palm.
“But I’ll come when you call.
And I’ll help you find your way.
Where was it you were trying to go?”

And the man didn’t know what to say.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the dog.
“I know where to go when I am lost.
Come with me.”

And the dog led the man
(though to all appearances, it seemed
the man walked the dog)
and they walked down Hailipo Road
to Papipi,
to a kiawe tree shaped like
a frozen wave about to fall.
They followed it
as though it were a signpost
and turned left.

The man paid little attention
to the houses and cars and people they passed,
all the sun-faded, rusted and roasted things.
He knew how quickly they changed
and how futile it was
to try to learn them with each passing season
and each passing day.

He instead stared down at what
his slippers tasted
with each slapping step.

Everything was white,
not the clean white of new paper
but a dirty, tarnished white.
It was as though he were walking on
a world-stained cloud.

Everything white:
old dogshit, husked and fibrous,
like the ash of charcoal briquettes
too dry even for flies.
Or coral, the same coral that made
most of the dirty white walls around here.

“Coral,” said the dog, as though reading his mind,
“are the bones of countless tiny sea animals.
We are essentially walking over a vast graveyard.”
And the dog turned his head
and glanced back at the man,
tongue leaking out of a toothy grin.
“What must we be to them?
And what must they be to us?
Are we their memories, or are they ours?”

The man scrunched his face.
The dog was getting annoying;
he had disturbed him
from his contemplation of white.

He returned his eyes to his slippers
only to find that they had taken up sand,
warm grains slipping between his toes.
When he looked up and around,
he discovered he was somewhere else.

“Here we are,”
announced the dog.
“Where I go when I am lost.”

Before the two of them
was the edge of the world
hungry and erosive
carrying white shimmering clouds as offerings
and breaking them closer and closer to their feet
pulling what was dislodged slitheringly back.

“Stay here,”
commanded the dog,
“I’ve some bones to rediscover.”
And the dog trotted off
trailing smooth padded prints.

The man collapsed, sat.

His fingers grasped the sand
like hungry roots
but it all slipped out and between
until his fists were buried in their warmth.

He closed his eyes
and the sun cast red shadows
over his fading vision.

He remembers.

They had cut the tree down.

It had been a surgical procedure,
piecemeal and precise.
A part of him had to admire the
workmanship.
Branches cut progressively
cast into the mulcher
chewed up and spit out into
the back of a dump truck.

Little by little (but quickly nonetheless)
the tree was denuded of leaves,
and then it lost its skeleton
and then it lost its spine
and finally even the stump
was leveled to the ground.
At the end, it was gone,
and the dump truck
was filled with damp powder.

What had taken decades to grow
had been removed in the span of a day.

He opened his eyes again
and the world appeared to him
as it truly was
an endless “Indian giver”
taking everything away
over and over and over.

He grasped the sand again, hard.

And then it came to him,
with sharp suddenness.

He remembered a day
when he sat on this very beach
on this very spot.
His wife was hunched over
collecting ogo from the surf break.
Obaban was beside him
sitting like a planted tree.
And his children were laughing
as the waves turned them end over end
pushed them away and pulled them back.

The sun on the tail end of its journey
took the first hints of color
warming his chest, his face.

Everything was perfect in that moment,
the world in its fullness.

He remembered closing his eyes
to burn it all into him,
so he would remember it forever.

When he opened his eyes,
it was all gone again.

But he remembered it still.

He felt a wet warmth against his hand.
“You okay?”
called the dog.
“I tried to find a bone
I’d buried around here,
but I got a diaper instead.”
The dog sneezed, trying to eject the smell, the taste.

“Anyway,” the dog continued,
glancing behind itself,
“I’ve got to run.
It looks like they’re here for you,
but a disloyal and wild thing like me
can’t be too careful.”

The dog licked his hand again.
“Was nice talking to you.
By the way, they used to call me
Boomer, short for something that is
supposed to come back."
He grinned a yellow grin.
And then with a bark,
he was off,
paws splashing in the shorebreak.

Before long, a hand fell on the man’s shoulder.

“Masaru Mitakara?”
said the police officer.

The man stared blankly back.

“I’m here to take you home, Mr. Mitakara,”
said the police officer.
“Your wife is waiting for you.”

And the man nodded,
rose to his feet,
shook the sand from his slippers.

And without a second glance
he accompanied the officer back
home.