USA

meuel@batnet.com

SO DEEP AND DEEPLY BLUE
(Crater Lake, Oregon)

Beauty is magnetic:
drawing us toward it,
holding us tightly to it,
consuming us with its allure.

The lake taught me this.  
So deep and deeply blue, 
it pulled against me quietly 
till only blue was left.

THE IDEA
(Merced Lake, Yosemite, 1962)

"The idea," Dad told us 
as we set to break camp,
"is to leave it better 
than it was when we arrived."
So, we picked it all up -- 
each bottlecap and paper scrap
and aluminum flake 
and splinter of string.
Then three of us gathered 
some fallen pine boughs 
for the next campers to use 
when they came along.

It was hard to know then, 
in those vague, heedless years, 
how clear to Dad 
those simple words were:
how they lived in his head
like notes in a song;
how they pointed the way 
for each step that he took.
Still, I stored them within, 
not seeing that I had.
The learning came later,
as Dad knew it would.

CITY OF REFUGE
(Puuhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park, Hawaii)

For three centuries, 
they traveled 
to this white sand beach
with its tall, 
fluttering coconut palms
and imposing wooden shrines:
those warriors who 
had lost in battle,
the breakers of the sacred laws,
and others who feared 
the harshest 
punishments of the land. 
They came 
because this place 
had been set aside:
a haven for the hunted 
where wrongs 
could be absolved
and lives begun again.

Today, we come here, too,
more curious than desperate,
another pair of tourists
to stroll about
this breezy, open-air museum.

But, with every forward 
step I take,
I feel a backward tug.
What is it, I wonder,
that¹s calling me to stop?
Is it amazement 
that such a place
could once exist and thrive?
Or is it the sadness 
of seeing 
what now lives only 
as a curiosity -- 
a blunt reminder 
of our constant, 
wrenching struggle
to be kind?

© All Copyright, 2000, David Meuel.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.