Mahalo to Mom

Kaua’i reveres the Menehune who farmed taro,

and later, plantation workers 

eating rice from tin pots in the fields.

Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Portuguese, Puerto Rican,

mahalo, I thank you, my mother, as I walk along the beach

feel your fingers wrapped around my hand

like when I dragged my toe in wet sand

and dreamed of everything I wanted to be.

With all the helicopters in the sky you’d think this was Oakland,

every 40 minutes a new tour flies over the Na Pali coast,

a pilot pointing out the beach where Nellie in South Pacific

washed a man right out of her hair.

Cultural references give places significance,

like this morning when I rubbed myself with sun block in front of the television,

a news anchor interviewed a man who demonstrated

how to make poi the old way, pounding the root to a taffy

and rolling a free sample between his fingers.

The host pronounced it good. Very good.

Some things are transmitted in waves.

To know Kaua’i, you must

drive the rental far from chain-linked traffic

to bamboo forests shielded in philodendron

and up the basalt side of mountains

where everything is endangered and hidden.

You explain how people have always

packed up and migrated to a fresh watering hole

until the next hurricane.

Palms rub their fronds against each other 

in the Trade Winds and then blow apart.

Which way do I swim now?