PU'U O MAHUKA
     The Hill of Flight

            1. The Way

Close, dream-hidden, her need is dumb as tongues
In animals. She cannot speak of the change
She wants. Change is only the dropping of wind
Under mounted moonbanks, turning the beach air humid,
Like breath of dogs. Her own low breathing quickens
Scenting the injury she needs. At the wind break,
Stripping, she rakes her flesh with ironwood burrs
Till it bleeds. She takes a stone and crosses, hunting
Softly to the Hill of Flight, and waits.
Her face in fading moonlight fills with darkness
Telling her she will find the way in stones.

            2.

change
half moon mounted
fast
at daybreak
in fear's pallor
if I run
to him
what will his fist do
in the furious cut
cliff rock above the ocean crowded
fish boils swelling
the white
stone dropped down

Good.
I will take him his own
pitted lava.
He wants nothing not his from the first.

            3. The Edge

Three stone circles linked
Both hands holding fast
To separate low boughs
Of the short tree
Hood from the stunted sun
For beggars who take their salt
And hissing breaths rapidly.

            4. The Stone Prayer

It is noon.
The sunlight has gone still and flat
Centering thicket-filled rounds at the summit
Rock walled with lava.
I wait in heat, blood stricken,
After the way of the alii
To offer a stone
Wrapped in long ti leaves.
I know of the danger.
These stones hold the giant power.
But I have a strong prayer.

Stones are the right gift.
I fold a warm leaf in a black rock from the wall.
And replace it there.
I wait without moving.

            5. Before Night

The spread of silence.
The netted sun that failed.
Great nails of gold in the ocean.
The tide of huge night rising
Into the weight of light.
At the high center
In the highest circle
Sight.

            6. The Stone Answer

On earth it is not so that men and women
Shall have what they pray for
Out of whatever need or power.
There is no way for them to earn what they want
Or to deserve what they are given.

The queens that labored here are dead.
Their babies are dead.
The warriors and their fathers also are dead.
At this height what lives
Is what folds a long leaf around a black stone-
Not what is prayed for.
That falls away in time.
But the prayer
Holds.
Long past the reaches of a single night
Impaled on the sun
Immeasurable blessing travels with you
Who came to pray in the stiff weeds
Because you see the truth
Because you believe it
Because your coming does not violate this place.

Go, in the brief sifting of rain.
You have what you prayed for.

　

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