So what is a fluke? Is it an odd event? Or maybe a fortuitous confluence of several less odd events, like when five little beasties all start to feed at one spot and innocently create a star? Or is a fluke an actual little beastie that just happens to be shaped like an anchor lobe?

The answers are yes. Here they are, Five Flukes jaw to forehead as they chomp and a Sixth who will try to join them if it grows up, not part of the pattern yet, just darting around for little dots and shreds that escape the big guys.

I carved the flukes from a locally grown wood, koa. Koa is the Hawaiian name for a member of the Acacia family that grows well at higher altitudes on the Big Island. It was was once fairly abundant, but the wood is so treasured for its color and grain that the stocks are falling fast. Back in the eighties, Tai Lake, a very talented local worker of wood, forester, and environmentalist, was doing some approved clearing of damaged trees and replanting up on the volcano behind us, and he sold me a truckload of "slash": joints and other unsawable hunks, which I aged and then meted out to myself over the years to whittle into sculptures. Koa is a lttle hard to work with, but the results are so rewarding that it is my absolute favorite wood.

The base is some kind of stone or perhaps rock filled resin, I think. It is quite heavy, which is important because the sculture would be top heavy with anything less. The base is thirteen by sixteen inches. The piece rises twenty-eight inches and is tenty-two inches wide.

On the back of the base I find my inked markings, " "Six Flukes" HOWARD 00 ". And I notice that this sculpture would be stable and perhaps attractive mounted on a wall. Direction means nothing to little flukes. But there is no hardware installed to do this: the bottom is plain and smooth and flat.

"Six Flukes" Koa Carving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$ 450