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Elbows is gone

Elbows is gone!

She lays lonely

down the gritty black slope.

The tree missing an arm

Looks lopsided,

Forlorn.

No longer intimidating;

Lost perhaps.

Its purpose shorn.

 

One more dread

Disappears

As Ahuilama is

Slowly tamed.

 


There was that rooty

Always wet section

With more technical ground

Than most 100’s.

They cut all the trees

It dried out and became easy.

I still breath

a sigh of relief.

Fell there five times

loop three in 2005.

 

They chopped

The spider webs in

The tangles

Of the river of roots

Down near the Banyans.

Went down hard there once

And the dread still rises

like bile to the back of my throat.

Almost runable now.

 

Huffer cleared out

That nasty bit

Of  roots and rocks just below concrete posts.

Years back now.

I slipped there once.

My body still whines 

Even as I skip down

The easy steps.

 

Saw a man in a leg cast

Trying to get up

Manoa Falls Trail today

“You know I’d think about this,”

I cautioned.

He ignored me,

moved slowly along on crutches.

Will complain when he breaks

The other leg,

Demanding more gravel,

a bull dozer perhaps.

Visitor  safety is imperative!!

Morons making rules.

 

Do we need to schedule a

Trail unimprovement day?

Work back toward more

Trail personality?

 

I’d say I’m just getting old

But that makes no sense.

The black hole

Of the Trails

Has consumed me,

Spit me out.

I wander paths that are

Inverted mirror images

Of my shadowy memories. 

 

But they cut down Elbows!

Elbows who let me

Flirt with danger

A couple times a loop

What is there to fear now high up

On this mundane Ahuilama?

 

And Elbows,

She lies there down the slope

As lost and forlorn

As I feel staring down at her.

 

 

Kalapu Ulavale