Melanie Houle

Second Sight

Back then, I cringed to see you come around,
reluctant to be tainted by the stain
of one so unbecoming, who turned down
the spotlight I was avid to attain,
content to play the chauffeur and the clown.
Today, I cringe to think I was so vain,
to smirk and roll my eyes and call you fool,
court jester to our glitterati crowd.
You sensed what none of us could say out loud,
that we were frightened, just play-acting cool.
The backlight of the years now shines on you,
suspending judgment, calling me your friend.
Half my life to capture what you knew:
that only kindness matters in the end.

Introduction to a Mentor
      
In a dream, I stumbled on a wizened
hausfrau in Berlin.  Her old eyes pierced me,
tempered steel, then softened, showing me
her door.  Across her threshold lived a shrine
to history: her long-dead husband's bed,
miraculously spared two world wars' fire. 
I startled at her wry irreverence: 
Why do you think that God made Germany? 
Just because he likes to sleep with widows! 
She called herself a poet of the wars,
schooled in loss and scarcity, frugal
with her words:  The title of this one
means stalemate.  No one wins.  Always, men
fight to gain and women not to lose.

She smiled at my high-heels and turban, said
I had a style.  She once was vain about
her legs, her feet arthritic now.  Perhaps
she'd teach me poetry?  She scoffed and waved
dismissal with her hand.  Life is the lesson,
it's out there.  Go and live your own.

Practices the Hawai'i Visitors Bureau

May Have Neglected to Mention

Pele is goddess of volcanos, hence
explosive, wild as fire, steeped in vengeance.
Visitors explore at their expense,
when in their blind and clumsy innocence
they recklessly disrupt the ancients’ bones,
or worse, relieve themselves on sacred stones.
Ignorance of law is no excuse
to Madame Pele.  Stories of her rage
are legend, chanted through the generations.
Be warned, stranger: she brooks no abuse
of her avowed domain and its traditions.
Brimstone rains on any sacrilege.
The guilty swim (hear her demonic whoop!)
parboiled like lobsters in her lava soup.