"The Rainbow Body."
That island for all of us who went there,
Japanese mostly and a few, one German boy, an Italian boy,
several others--
I don't think any other Americans went
there, was a great experience.
A really powerful experience for everyone who went there it
done.
It has the wilderness of Japan 5,000 years ago still,
and it has being on that volcanic chain of islands.
It has the sense, the knowledge that it
was a stepping stone for very ancient Stone Age voyagers, who
probably saw the smoke from the island from afar
and used it as a navigation mark just as they still do today.
"The Rainbow Body."
Cicada fill up the bamboo thickets,
a wall of twanging shadow, dark joints and leaves,
Northwest wind from the China Sea.
Salt clouds skim the volcano mixed with ash and steam.
Rumbles downwind from the night gleam summit near Algol
breathing the Milky Way.
The great drone in the throat of the hill, the winds--
pardon me, the waves, drum, the wind sigh.
At dawn the mountain canyons spread and rise
to the falling call of the Akahige,
we have wake in the East light fresh.
At low tide swim out through a path in the coral
and into the land of the sea people.
Rainbows under the foam of the breakers surge and streaming
from the southern beach.
The lips where you float, clear wave with the subtle currents,
sea tangled tendrils outward roil of lava,
or the cobalt speckled curling mouth of a shako clam.
I'm going to read that image again.
The lips where you float clear wave with the subtle currents,
sea tangled tendrils outward roil
of lava, cobalt speckled curling mouth of a shako clam.
That was swimming diving behind a naked woman, who
was diving for oysters, with her legs apart, seeing her vulva,
and the lips of it, and the hair of it moving with the currents,
identical with the sea anemone and the seaweed around it.
And with the same coil and curl of the clams
the large chunk of clams when they're opening,
like suddenly striking across all of these structures in life
and seeing that they are the same structure.
Climb delicately back up the cliff without using our hands.
Eat melon and steamed sweet potato from this ground.
We hold and fished grubbing out bamboo runners,
hammering straight blunt, harpoon heads, and spears.
Now sleep on the cliff, float in the surf,
nap in the bamboo thicket eyes closed, dazzled ears.