Between two points
Somewhere out in our world
men can do this:
sail asymmetrical outrigger canoes
through two thousand miles
of Pacific swells
with only stars
for maps.
They have over a hundred routes
in memory and sit awake all night,
their knuckles white
on coconut fibre ropes,
their faces tipped
heavenward.
There's only water
and sky to know
and so they know them.
Drinking from a Hose
July and August
they play outside
whole, long days.
Shoeless, the same clothes
days running.
Skin tightened
from the sun and hair gone pale and wild,
they are everywhere
all picks and pokes,
scrapes, scabs and scratches,
summer rashes.
Still, sometimes their cheeks
ache from laughing.
Passing, I have seen them
slurping from the garden hose,
then flopping on their backs
under our porcelain sky.