I am water,

only because you are the ocean.

We are here

only because old leaves have been falling.

A mutching of memories folding

into buried hands.

The cliffs we learn to edge

The tree truck hollowed, humming.

I am a tongue

only because you are the body

planting stories with thumb.

Soil clings to your knees

Small stacks of empty clay pots dreaming.

I am the milky fish eye, only

because it’s your favorite.

A slipper is lost in the yard.

A haku lei is chilling in the icebox.

I am a cup of feathers,only

because you want to fill the hours.

I am a turning wrist, only

because you left the hose on.

Heliconias are singing underwater

Beetles are floating across the yard.

(A poem by Donovan Kuhio Colleps

Entitled Kissing the Opelu.)

I am in so many spirit walks

that I’ve lost track of them all….

walking with my sister whose been looking at the other side

walking with a new baby coming in and her wild journey to get here.

Walking with my brother’s move to Hawaii.

It’s too far away to suit me

but then he is always in the “dog house”

(according to me.)

Walking with myself and my inability to change.

Feeling the sweetness of love

coming from the beyond

where my sister and my mother and my father are

my grandmother too.

This place is a spirit walk.