“Ubiquity,” on the other hand, has no definable history with me. I don’t know where I learned it or where I’d ever use it. Omnipresence, I guess. Everywhere at once. God-like. Ubiquitous. In the presumed natural order of things, all things are perpetually connected into one universal entity of which everything is a contributing part….

We were waist deep in a lo’i, stamping it down and planting taro cuttings. A man wearing a straw hat and malu supervised. One of the elders had his baby fastened to his back with a green sash. His baby’s toes were dipped in chocolate-colored mud. After lunch, we rolled boulders across the makeshift bridge…

I stand at the base of a venerable redwood, Put my hand on its rough, knowing skin. I feel I have to. I cannot say why. Shafts of sunlight pour down from the distant sky, Like light through the rose window of an old cathedral. Once I brought Lauren here. We had drifted apart by…

He’s always thinking about other people, more particularly, what he can do for this family. Barbeque perhaps, bake some muffins, rake leaves, wash car, babysit, give lychee, mangoes, avocados. Every morning he watches their house while he sips his coffee, catching snatches of their lives through the windows. How they are so busy, making breakfast,…

Poem Asking Forgiveness From People Long Dead Winter has set in, though the hummers have stayed and must search every morning for sustenance immediately they open their eyes. Immediately I open my eyes and think of your visiting my dreams last night after years gone, my slipping hands around your strong midriff, your dancer’s body,…

I breathe the stillness of a predawn air, the day after Christmas, the day after heavy rain and winds accumulate their miseries of flood advisories, power outages and highway closures. I breathe the predawn air, heavy with the sound of humidity– the hum and whir of air conditioning units perched on window sills facing unblinking…

The Brakes Near seven decades of run on, sentenced to a worn and hazy neatly there you go, so you’ve slowed, you slowly, give up to the end of indecision always anyway, come to a creeping standstill, your appointed hour quavers at stasis, the surrendering admit yourself to the final mystery of what you wanted…

“You pau?” she asked. Not impatient or mocking. Just a question. “Pau,” I said, not even sure. Maybe I could go again. But maybe she would charge again and I would waste money. “Pau,” I repeated. Put on my pants, hands still shaking from the pleasure but I knew not to linger. I don’t smoke…