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Lahaina Noon: Na Mele O Maui: Poems

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In LÂHAINA Noon, Eric Paul Shaffer joins a revered group of authors who have figured out how to stop time. Just as Thoreau did in Walden and Aldo Leopold did in Sand County Almanac, Shaffer halts the endless march of minutes and guides the reader to marvel at all that is missed in the rush of routine. While Shaffer's home of Kula, Maui may lend itself to contemplation of the cosmos, it's not the view but the vision that marks this text as worthy. Shaffer sees the stars and the birds and even himself as only a quiet, thoughtful person can. He then takes these observations and wraps them in words both eloquent and playful. Read "A Song for the Maui Onion" and try not to say "opalescent omphalos" without a smile. Or try considering "a child who bears a mother who bears a mother" without a wistful grin. But LÂHAINA's theme isn't, by any means, Disney-esque. In both good and bad, Shaffer sees us as we rarely allow ourselves to be seen: "Everybody is somebody nobody ever expected" comes the description in "Officer, I Saw the Whole Thing." In "Ka Maka O Pele: A Prayer in Our Time of Endless War," Shaffer apologizes to the red planet, Mars, as we shamelessly and ceaselessly battle "on our blue world of wars." LÂHAINA Noon emerges as a work both insightful and pleasurable to read. Shaffer's perspective is certainly enlightening; his wordplay certainly clever and memorable, and this work, certainly, a commendable adjunct to the talents he displayed in Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen.

Eric Shaffer's New book of poems is an exquisite exploration of light and earth, water and air and poetry itself (which is to say, life itself). The poems shine with brilliant clarity of place (and our standing in space) "...In the surf,/the sky curls within the arch of the rising wave,/ wind sculpting wave, sea weaving sky/ in a constant curl, each around the other,/ on the long luxuriant rush to shore," writes Shaffer in "A Blue Curve." And we are struck by the sensuousness of the language and the luxuriant feeling of our bodies in our "proper" place--which has more to do with awareness and the patience of observation than airplane tickets, Uhaul trucks and the next best place to live.

Stay put and see what's beneath our feet, what surrounds us continually, is what Shaffer's poems invite us to do. "Today, I'm a shadowless man./ The sun calls me into the street,/ and I walk alone into the light/ of noon. The moment has come."

Be clear. Read this book.