First Visit to Kaua'i

[This is the fifth of seven runners-up from our second annual Creative Contest. This year's contest theme was "Green." Each winning and runner-up entry will post on successive days, so be sure to make daily visits to www.kauaibackstory.com.]

by Laurie Barton

Red was our first impression:
Martian soil, as if we'd landed
in a dream of Mars, spinning

around a very hot sun.
One mountain, like a man
or giant creature dozing

in a bed of wild sugarcane
greener than anything, ground
still wet from all the raining

that spilled into a commotion
of roosters. Nothing sounded
like home, there was nothing

alive in our dry imaginations
like the green tunnel we found:
leafy arch to Koloa, swaying

interlocked trees, shiny green
passage to history, to a town
of sugar-ghosts, humming