Nonfiction

Kamaaina in Hawaii
by Elsa Fernandez
Midnight indigo skies delirious with shooting stars and exploding rockets of light. Mesmerized, we watched the Pleiades from the warm sands of Hapuna Beach, a carefree band of sky-watchers. The island was peaceful and fragrant with night-blooming pikake--Alii Wahine O Ka Po. An island, mysterious with legends of gods and the Alii, and the ghostly Night Marchers, ancient warriors who still walked the valleys. A golden place, tangled with beaches and simmering calderas, and sometimes snow atop extinct Mauna Kea. Steaming volcanic vents where daring adventurers suspend bundles of mahi and spinach wrapped in taro leaves, for their dinners. Or learning to wander the tide pools at Kapoho Bay, plucking opihi off the rocks before the waves sweep back in.
 
“Just broil them with butter and shoyu,” the local fishermen tell us. We hiked the Halema’uma’u Trail into Kilauea, leaving gifts of ohelo berries and bottles of Jack Daniels, scattered in makeshift cairns. Madame Pele enjoyed her bourbon but kept us in obeisance with her earthquakes and eruptions, still wanting more. “Always stop when you see an old woman and a white dog at night--that’s Tutu Pele,” the locals say. 
​Magma rockets fracture the sky
Lifeless land stretches to the sea
New land steaming to life in water.
Pele takes away.
Pele gives back.​
​The prompt for this haibun was: “My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars,” Nikos Kazantzakis
 
I wrote this in my Haiku and Haibun class. The verse at the end is in the Tanka style. I had just made a quick trip to the Big Island to attend a fundraiser for those displaced by Kilauea’s eruption. I have lived in Hawaii and consider it a place for my heart. It is devastating to see the destruction. Kapoho Bay no longer exists. It has been filled up with lava. Green Lake, the deepest freshwater lake on the Islands, no longer exists—filled with lava. I thought the Bay Area’s earthquakes were frightening. But the daily and often hourly quakes triggered by the still-continuing eruption give new meaning to the words “rock and roll”.
 
“Alli Wahine O Ka Po” means Queen of The Night, referring to the night-blooming jasmine or pikake as it is known in Hawaii.
About Elsa Fernandez
click to read Bio
Vertical Divider
​Elsa Fernandez grew up in Asia. She has lived in San Francisco since 1970 and never gets tired of this lovely city. She has travelled the world and still gets excited flying back home and to finally land at SFO. Her family is scattered around the world—India, Australia, Dubai, England, Ireland and Argentina. She is a political junkie and majored in Journalism and Political Science. She loves music and plays the piano quite well (one of her dreams was to own a piano bar in upcountry Maui . . .  she would probably call it the Maui Moon!). Writing poetry is an emotional outlet for her.
Other works in this issue by Elsa: 
Piano Lessons (Nonfiction)
Confessions of a Pigeon Hater (Poetry)
Please Comment
click to open a comment box
    The contributor will receive a copy of your comment.

​The Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual arts by members of OLLI at SF State.
Vertical Divider

​The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University​ provides material support to the Vistas & Byways volunteer staff.