Frames Of Reference Poem by Fred Odom

The background picture on my computer screen
Is the vista from our view overlooking Maui’s beach and sea from the rented condo
On our last visit.
It captures the wind through the palms’ fronds that framed the Pacific’s chopped surface
Created by afternoon trade winds near sunset,
The steel blue ocean out to the sky’s matching horizon, and
Framed by the shoreline leading to Kaanapali in the distance, and
The open porch with tabled sunset tropical drinks in the fore.
The azure sky speckled with tropical clouds exploding colors
Just previous were mirrored images of the whitecaps
From which sunset kitesurfers flew off the tops
Like snow skiers over moguls, back home.

The picture cannot show but
Is connected to multiple visions of
Lunch in Kaanapali with my son at a restaurant too famous
for the flavor of its hamburger or
Our stroll down the street visiting all the art studios we could, or
My wife and daughter taking pictures at The Rainbow Forest
That now adorn our den in blue
Having a four foot by five foot stained glass window in the room
Representing all the tropical fish the family members
Loved to follow in Maui’s corraled reefs.
It cannot represent to others the music of Hawaii we brought back
Nor the ukulele my son taught himself to play on our return.
No, the written and spoken memories of that experience
Can lose their accuracy in reflecting the day and days spent in summer’s warmth
In the middle of winter
That are sung there by the Humpback whale in their birthing waters
Having traveled thousands of miles from arctic cold home waters in the North.

Yet the written and spoken word can reveal
The perspective of visitors totally taken in
By the frame of reference of the picture.