The DMQ Review

Sharon Hudson © 2003

On the Road to Hana

 

How aboriginal I am in grief.
I haunt the places we loved,
Pray like a pilgrim at roadside shrines,
Seek some sign, however tenuous.

In the safe: A last to-do list
(As if these were household chores),
Also a prewritten obituary,
And a special note which said,

"Look for me at the Jodo Temple,
Where Buddha watches every sunset.
Or that little church on Ke`anae,
Where we napped by the crashing waves."

I am terrified that I’ll walk alone
Among the tombstones and golden lilies,
Fall asleep beneath the rattling
Screw pines, and dream of no one.

Jim Willis
Copyright © 2003

Jim Willis has an M.A. from Tulane in English and 2 years toward a Ph.D. at The University of North Carolina but has worked for the past 15 years as the director of a chemical dependency treatment center in a hospital in Tacoma, WA. He has published in The Tulane Review and will have poems coming out in Ekphrasis.  He is working on a collection of poems about Hawaii to be titled The Darwin Point.

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