Poem by

KATHLEEN HELLEN

A day like crowing

 Brown milk of the Pacific

after Kurosawa’s rain

Over sleepy solar panels oyster white

opens to an archipelago of pink.

Is it a plane? Thunder? Come out and play, dawn roosters.

Maybe cliffs today. The red dirt of the canyon.

Narrative of flip flops, hoods pulled up.

The back bed of a red Ford loaded up, backing out

behind the cove. The ukuleles anchor happy talk. 

The cat ignores the hens.

The grounded ronin cock

struts into the days that melt into the dusk

while men in dreads, in woven bracelets, peck

at iridescent cigarettes.

My son makes up a story—there’s a woman who lies down

beside the mountain and I see her face in rock, her hip

over the Sunshine Helicopter’s lot.