It was but the briefest of sightings
as I traveled toward Kahului.
He was just so suddenly there,
standing up from behind the guardrail.
He looked weathered
but wore a clean chambray shirt. His head,
covered in a shock of hair the color of Cane smoke,
wore it neatly gathered at the nape. And,
his dark and aged walnut-colored skin
seemed etched into a pattern years in the making,
resolute but seemingly pleased
with the arrival of the sun.
He smiled fully upward to it,
stretched and greeted the day after having spent the night
on the shoulder of the road, I assumed,
beneath the stalks that guarded his trespass.
Yet there he was
waking to a new day with arms held righteously high.
How simply happy in this world
he appeared
as I drove by.