My wife’s father was fond of Hawai`i’s birds,
Scattering seeds for the mejiro and sparrows
At the mall or the beach, rescuing mynah birds
Ensnared in those plastic loops they manufacture
To hold cans, training the doves in his neighborhood
To cross his threshold and become his house guests
For a few moments of bird seed and curious cooing.
After he left us last March, taking flight in a night,
Diane would still see his strut in old Filipino men
Disembarking from the bus in Mililani or hear him
Clucking among the murmurings of the old Japanese
Men within his old flock at Ala Moana Shopping Center,
All the while he lay locked underneath the ground.
So when she found his old hair brush a full year
Later, she realized one way to release him to the sky.
We took the brush to Ala Moana Beach, plucked
It clean and set his feathers in the ocean to drift
In the surf below the pigeons and the white egrets
Wheeling above the reef, just below the stars.
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