The ancient picnic table is a rotting wreck in rattling gray grass
stiff in the season of slow growing. Nothing greens here

without a gift of water. Weeks burn by, and the stalks grow only
gold in the glare. Behind me, the sun casts a slant of silver rays
through clouds, over fields of sugar cane, on the ridges

and gulches to the west. From above, a sifting of leaves
and dust of bark from the kiawe tree litters the boards. Motes spark
in the sun warming my back like the hand of an old friend

come early. No one else has ever seen this place this way,
this morning, this moment, nor will they again. The sun moves,

the clouds wander. When I raise my cup, the coffee is burred
with floating bits, a black deeper in the sudden light. I pitch
the last of the lukewarm brew over the grass and set down the mug.

Then, I see the scorpion, green as the table’s peeling paint,
a handspan from my fingers still looped through the cup’s ring.

Bees hover and birds bounce through thick limbs overhead,
but a scorpion’s poise reveals its presence. Maybe since I arrived

with pen, paper, and an eye for the view, it’s been coiled there
like a threat, an accident awaiting the witless. All morning,
I gawked at the furrowed sea and sun-scored red slopes, attentive

to the distant and dramatic, but not to significant lives
close at hand, within reach, and indifferent to our slow recognition.

Let us praise the tortoise,
whose rocky body is a sky-pitched vault,
whose arched legs are the scaly pillars
to transport the domed temple in which he lives,
whose eyes are piercing and resolute as winter stars,
whose rounded armor is studded with amber pyramids,
whose stride is constant,
whose pace is confidence,
whose poise is the majesty of ease,
whose grace is to grow into a globe,
whose persistence proves
envy and success pursue the persistent
for greatly different reasons.