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