His beat-up green pickup faces Haleakala, her thrashed <br />Celica toward K-Mart, on the shoulder of Pulehu Road. The lovers <br />stand in roadside mud, arms encircling <br /> <br />each other, gazing over a field of sugar cane at two boiling columns <br />of smoke rising from the mill. They stand too close to be casual, <br /> <br />toes dirtied where they hang over the slipper's edge. <br />The afternoon reveals they should not be here, should not be <br />together, that only half their hearts attempt <br /> <br />to conceal their meeting. I drive past, but they do not look over, <br />knowing everyone on the island knows everyone else. <br /> <br />Not wanting to see themselves seen, their heads remain turned away. <br />My windows are down, and the stink of the dump rattles <br />white plastic bags tangled in kiawe trees. <br /> <br />I'm glad they let me pass without a glance. I don't want to know <br />whose wife she is or who his children are <br /> <br />or recognize a Safeway cashier or a meter-reader for Maui Electric. <br />My mirror shows unmoved lovers embracing <br />beneath ragged, windy limbs as trash cartwheels across the road. <br /> <br />They know the road to the dump is far too public <br />for a lover's lane, and they have not forgotten their families <br /> <br />and their friends drive this red-stained, two-lane blacktop <br />to throw away what they no longer want, what they have used <br />beyond use, and all the many things they have broken.<br /><br />Eric Paul Shaffer<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lovers-on-pulehu-road-between-the-sugar-mill-and/
