Kona, October, 2022, IRONMAN World Championships
I wrote "Kona, October, 2022, IRONMAN World Championships" during one of the most beautiful trips I've been on, for work no less, which also happened to coincide with a tragic massacre in Nong Bua Lamphu, Thailand, that saw the murder of 36 people and injury of 10.
Looking at the violence, injustice, and losses in our world straight-on is a critical goal if we want to have better days with dignity and safety for all people, no matter what else might be going on in our lives, whether it be during an exceptionally privileged and joyful time, or not.
Having art as a way to process, preserve, and share the hard losses we see, up close and from afar, is one of the many, many points where #poetry brings value and a practice to my life I always have and always will hold close.
Pre-dawn in vog,
Hualālai above Ali’i,
ample compounds, flush,
smoldering red,
this side
of pyroclastic,
for now,
in the night’s close,
churning above the gap
I run on,
one road
in Kona, slim thread
between volcano
and the Pacific,
laced in salt,
sulphur, and ash
brooding beneath
a waning moon,
and air
that sharpens later
in rain warmed
before sunset
on the coast I face
from a lobby
steeped, brimming over
with decorum,
our stage, fine
as gossamer,
atop tectonic
divergence,
a stand
I hold tight,
tighter
as news arrives
of 36 slain
in a childcare center
in Thailand, nothing
steady,
paroxysmal, or
about to be,
phases of ruin
at one pace, or another,
geologic, or just under
1,200 feet per second
since he was so close
to his victims,
the evening
closes,
the stars
cut minuscule strikes
in depths vast enough
any edge is past seeing,
even
guessing at,
no telling where
any bottom could be,
the possibility of none
feels reasonable
while watching the shore break
I try to focus on,
orbits rising
to crest
above faces,
then, fall
on the only planet
we know of
with perfect barrels
and mass shootings,
systems bent under
declinations
in form
and policy,
new lows spreading as fast
as the pulse rising in my ears,
sights that widen my eyes,
scaling, then,
levels itself,
on, of all places,
a mongoose
in the lobby,
between me
and the sea,
then another,
fellow mammals,
their grace, like the waves,
insisting on nothing,
otherwise, is not
grace,
or what has
to be watched, flowing,
slipping over the hides
on each mongoose
and rides atop the water
gone to foam
off the jetties of igneous,
cracked and ragged,
bearing slim currents
of small muscles
and the oceans that always
surround us
and converse between
one member
and another
even quieter, tonight,
then,
as I watch,
the animals
and this set
disappear
from the end
of this Thursday.
