A Windshield Leaf

Like a side thought from Vermeer,
Bouncing off the glass like sun
And caught up in the general glare
Of our storm-lit celebration,
The fireworks of the sky
Tearing at the canopy
Of fronds, fraught
With freedom in the air
(If nowhere else), – still, our
Isolated, fallen angel
Flips from heaven to hell,
From hot to cold,
As computer chips I’m told
Switch from out to in,
Endlessly ambivalent, bipolar,
Moved by reasons
Beyond their simple skins,
As if the yellow skein
Of wax and sponge, mesophyll
And vein, switched lanes
Like LEDs to on and off,
As the light today lofts
From coal black squall
To the coral pink of sea,
As the indifferent winds
Of summer fall suddenly
Into gales that rip the bay
And twist the tropic items
On display into rains
And maelstroms, gyres
And eddies of the violent land,
So the film and tissue
Of this bland Ohi’a blade
Parades its double nature
In its shades, now pointless
To the tree it’s left,
To its former part
As solar spring,
Its paradise bereft,
But, shear and trembling
On our window screen,
Takes on a new career
As lighthouse, charm,
And maybe false alarm,
A beating strobe
Whose mystic pulse
Incarnates in its sessile
Skin a soul and vessel,
An ovate memory
Beyond its normal definition
As debris.

July 4–6, 2025, Kaiholu