Aina

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it…Our delight in the sunshine on the deep bladed grass today might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love. - Mary Ann Evans Cross (George Eliott)

The Hawaiians have love of this land

From which they sprung, limbs of dark coral

Trunks of cooled lava, eyes glistening

With olivine, a green crystal they call “Pele’s Tears.”

It is not coral, or lava or tears that I love,

But Diane, my wife, whose childhood

Perched on this island, perceiving the tropical grass,

The scraping cliffs, the beaches as close as neighbors;

Absorbing the ancient Hawaiian love

For the “aina” while my childhood hovered

Over California, perceiving vast mountains

From vast distances, equally distant beaches,

The close spring grasses dying to gold

Each summer, and hawks storming the clouds.

I only know how much I love that land

When I return to Sacramento to see

The yellow poppies listing on the side

Of freeway ramps, the levees curling alongside

The rivers watering the Central Valley,

Just the thought of giant redwoods growing

On those distant mountains, unperceived. 

There lies my aina, bounded on the side

Facing Hawai`i, by the same ocean

That separates me from it.  The barrier

Of miles is not an obstacle, for what grew

In California was something that has spread

Fertile and heavily ripe, to a new place

Where my children learn a new aina.