Poetry: Selections from Jim Kraus

Compost This

 

We talk over the distance

using tin cans connected

by thousands of miles of string.

 

Now, I remember.

I find a single grain of rice

nested in the cup of my ear.

 

I take it to the compost pile,

adding it to leftovers

from last night.

 

Nearby, I see the dismembered arm

of the guava tree by the front door,

one of its several trunks,

 

dead from fungus,

and decide to burn it

instead.

The Great Bass of the Humpback Whale

 

Submarine, their voices

mask my own,

a mere overtone.

 

Watertight door,

locked inside

submarine metal

cigar-shaped shell,

pipes everywhere,

clanging sound,

earsplitting pneumatic

hammering,

and rust.

 

Submarine school,

sitting in a circle

inside pressurized chamber,

ears ringing still—

tinnitus, the ubiquitous

overtone of immanence,

 

Underwater, a great stone

cradled in my arms,

walking on the sandy bottom

of the bay.

 

I hear their lowing now.

The palpable basso continuo.

Measuring Cups

 

Maps

 

I am walking toward 1908.

The thin line between France and Germany.

 

Look, Hans, there comes Kaiser Willy,

all buttons and barbed wire.

 

Clocks

 

Holiday weirdos lost in forest,

walking in circles, longing for valley walls.

 

Night bloomers weaving their negligent,

tiny fingers, into the bark.

 

Rowboats

 

Gunnels turned to fast-growing vines,

leaning toward sunrise always.

 

Now it is 1908, the beginning of the biplane world,

aerobatic gesturing over time’s crevasse,

the wobble and slosh of tide, eroding seawalls,

failing memory. Its shape.

 

Boatswain’s pipe,

taps,

dithering.

 

Money

 

I am the garden’s caretaker, wanderer.

Footprints on paper hillside.

Sisyphos pushing uphill

to boulder house,

cave, depository.

Solar Energy

 

Power shifts every morning

when the sun comes up,

and light begins to tell us

what mood the ocean is in.

 

Now, the ocean is smooth, mālie,

shining under a red sky.

Jim Kraus lives on Oʻahu. His poetry has appeared in Hawai’i Review, Kinalamten Gi Pasifiku Anthology (Guam), Poetry Hawai’i, Bamboo Ridge, Kentucky Poetry Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, San Marcos Review, Cape Rock Poetry Review, Neologism, Voices de la Luna, Another Voice and elsewhere. He earned a PhD in American Studies with specialization in environmental poetry from the University of Hawai‛i-Mānoa. Currently, he is Professor of English at Chaminade University, where he teaches creative writing, environmental literature and surf studies. He also edits Chaminade Literary Review. He enjoys swimming, surfing, visiting art galleries and museums, and reading contemporary poetry.