A Conference in Hawaii

A conspiracy of intention brought the delegates together

To the mirrored halls of these meeting rooms

And the marble lobby with its water falls and stone statues

Of Island gargoyles designed to invoke
A colonial benevolence no one recalls.

It began in the conventional way.

The heat grew desperate in the rooms
Amid a panic of commitment,
Opposing positions took on a flesh
That seemed to walk among us,
And for a while it became possible to think
That our sullen flesh might soon be shorn  
For a new and unimaginably brilliant habitation.

But then from the 23^rd floor
A stick figure in black like a doodle by Kafka
Lofted a dove from its hands
That fluttered a while before it fell
Through a shaft of Hawaiian light,
Turning as it dropped into a clutter of littering confetti.
And when I looked up again
The earnest delegates and their forbearing wives,
Their motions and resolutions,
Were gone.