In Kula on Maui
That upcountry evening, I carried
a battered wooden milk crate
from the garage up the two-track weedy lane
to the hilltop beyond the house
to watch the sun set. The fields were still,
and as I passed, so were the leaves
of jacaranda, brilliant purple blossoms long
gone. The kiawe tree had gathered
all of the night to come
beneath low, shadowed branches.
Zucchini lay swollen
and green on the mounds from south
to west. The sky over Haleakalā
was cloudless. The sun hovered
over waves in the Kealaikahiki channel
between Lānaʻi and Kahoʻolawe,
and the air shone with alpenglow, a luscious
pink from horizon to horizon lasting
for hours, or seeming so. The light did not fade.
The rosy gleam simply trilled
from sweet to delicious, and my skin
grew luminous in what passed for time
as the stars entered, one by one. Beside me,
the mountain glistened a shade
of watermelon subtly deepening, redder
and richer while dusk endured.
I lingered at the crest of the hill
until the path disappeared, and I could see only
the sky. The next day, the world ended.
–
Eric Paul Shaffer lives in what’s left of the Koʻolau Volcano on the fractured edge of the Nuʻuanu Landslide, Hawaiʻi’s largest local submarine landslide, covering hundreds of miles of seafloor and occurring more than a million years ago. Today, the caldera is peaceful enough for Shaffer, retired and full of words, to repeatedly write poems. His tenth poetry volume Free Speech will be published in 2026, joining Free Speech (2025) and Green Leaves (2023). Shaffer does not surf, yet lives on O‘ahu.
© 2026, Eric Paul Shaffer
Halfway Down the Stairs 