Itʻs January and early morning
mist covers fields’ curves,
spreads a quilt over her ridgeline:
shoulder swale, saddle pass hip.
I have learned the land
Is “that which feeds us”, ʻĀina,
and I do not wish to disturb her rest.
Sheʻs worked so hard to form
herself and hold us here
on an island overflowing:
Limu waving, mullet flash,
crab scurry over sand,
stone studded with limpet.
Mothers build nurseries
with estuaries and human hands
where ducklings bob
between kalo plot stems,
giving fish shade to spawn.
There she cradles us all,
her children, native and flown,
in her valleysʻ embrace.
So I am stunned by morning news
spread across my table:
mere miles from my daybreak musing
another mother gave birth last night,
unsheltered on a sidewalk ,
for the second time this infant year.
After pushing, she staggered
to her feet and walked away
while others simply watched because
they blamed her for the misery
that broke her, that would break
any of us if we were unattended,
unloved, unfed, unbound from the cord
that tethers us to life, to each other,
to the gothic cliffs that watch
every deed we commit.
—
Wendi White, raised in the Adirondack mountains, is a poet and educator now musing among the geckoes and ginger scented ridges of Oʻahu. She earned her MFA from Old Dominion University’s Creative Writing Program in Virginia and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first collection of poems, Turtle Island Rising, is forthcoming. When not at her writing desk, she advises students from across the Asia-Pacific region.
