This month, I offer a lovely, original poem, the fourth in a series, by Adele Ne Jame, a first-generation Lebanese American who has lived in Hawai’i since 1969. She has written extensively about Hawai’i and Lebanon in her poetry collections, including Field Work, The South Wind, Poems, Land and Spirit, and in her new manuscript, First Night at the Beirut Commodore and Other Poems. She has taught poetry at the university level in Hawai’i since 1986, and she has served as the Poet-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has been published in journals such as the Georgetown Review, Ploughshares, Atlanta Review, Nimrod, the Denver Quarterly, Poetry Kanto, and the Notre Dame Review. Her many awards include a National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, a Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, a Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize and an Eliot Cades Award for Literature. Her poems have been exhibited as broadsides at the Sharjah/ Dubai International Biennial, UAE and at the Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, Michigan. She and her artist daughter, Melissa Chimera, served as the 2022 Mikhail Series Lecturers at the University of Toledo.
To introduce this poem “A Water Prayer, Kula, Maui”, Adele relates:
"What moved me to write about Maui in this poem is the sentiment I share with the great English poet, William Wordsworth as expressed in his long poem, ‘The Prelude’ written more than two hundred years ago. While paddling a boat down a beautiful, densely tree-lined river near his home, the Derwent, the speaker ruminates on his solitary, transcendent moments so that he concludes, ‘there is a spirit that rolls through all things.’ This phrase has always deeply resonated for me. We recognize what the English and American Romantic writers of that period called a transcendental experience, that is communing with nature, actually feeling as if your body is one with the landscape that you are immersed in. This still can be a common experience in places that have not been defoliated. Many still treasure the sacred and healing nature of these transcendent experiences, and many of us still agree with Wordsworth that nature can cure the problems that society creates. Yet, we know some of these sacred places are now either gone or under deadly threat because of expansive commercial development and because of climate change. We well know that we lose these places at our own peril.
“In 1969 when I first stepped foot in the Hawaiian Islands, I fell in love with this place because of its beauty and spirit, that energy that emanates from natural world in this the most isolated archipelago on the planet. I fell in love because its people have always understood that they are stewards of God’s creation and who, in their ordinary daily life, exhibit deep reverence for it. I lived for a long time in Kula, upcountry, Maui close to where my daughter, Melissa, lived with her family for fourteen years. As a conservationist, she worked for Haleakalā National Park, on that glorious volcanic mountain that reaches 10,023 feet above sea level, and for a time, she served as the Acting Director of the Nature Conservancy there. We often hiked into Waikamoi Preserve together, intensely experiencing those same transcendent moments. So, the opening section of the poem is a celebration of that sacred landscape. Then the poem moves on to lament the tragic fires that occurred August 10, 2023. There were three fires in Kula, and Lāhaina was completely destroyed. The poem also reflects on what Lāhaina was before commercial development, deforestation, and the appropriation of land and water rights. But now, in spite of the terrible loss of life, displacement and the severe suffering of survivors and others in those communities, the slogan, ‘Maui Strong’ captures the will and spirit of those peoples who believe the healing of the land and of the people will come. The title of Melissa’s painting here says as much: ‘Not even the fiercest winds of Kaua`ula can extinguish the torch,’ the living spirit of Maui and its people.”
Melissa’s painting which accompanies this poem is entitled Not Even the Fiercest Wind (2023, mixed media on canvas, silk and linen). Referencing recent human-caused catastrophes—the fires of Maui and the leveling of Gaza—the title takes its name from the motto of Lahainaluna school which overlooks the ashes of Lahaina on Maui: “O Ke’ia Ka Kukui Pio Ole I Ka Makani O Kauaula” which says that not even the fiercest winds of Kauaula can extinguish the torch. Melissa adds: “The gauze silk sutures the burned fragments of canvas with place names my family and I have lived throughout the paeʻāina (the land throughout Hawai’i), the various continents and beyond, with references to 'io (Hawaiian Hawk), koa’ekea (White tailed tropicbird), and pulelehua (Kamehameha butterfly).”
Born and raised in Hawai’i, Melissa Chimera is a conservationist whose work consists of research-based investigations into species extinction, globalization and human migration. She has exhibited throughout the U.S., Asia, and the Middle East with solo and curatorial projects, and her work is included in the collections of the Honolulu Museum of Arts and the Arab American National Museum. She is the recipient of the Catherine E. B. Cox Award, finalist for the Duke University Lange-Taylor Prize and was Anchorage Museum’s 2022 Artist-in-Residence and the University of Toledo’s Endowment grantee for her work concerning immigrant narratives.
The editorial assistance of Cathy Chance Harvey, PhD, of Tylertown, in the preparation of this poem is gratefully acknowledged. Physicians are invited to submit poems for publication in the Journal either by email at drluciuslampton@gmail.com or regular mail to the Journal, attention: Dr. Lampton. - Ed.
A Water Prayer, Kula, Maui
On August 10, 2023, a few Maui Kumu hula met to discuss a proactive, culture based `aha (ceremony) through which pule (prayer) can be intentionally engaged for the healing of the people and lands devasted by the fires on Maui. Anahulu Ho`īnana Ola
Kili`ohu, they say, is the finest misty rain,
the kind that circles your upcountry home
at dawn, the kind that wanders
the night hills rolling here and there,
its healing power falling
into the shadowy places in your heart,
when a dark unforgiving sky
means that you no longer see
the leaves of the Koa tree outside
your cabin catch the sunlight,
those blade-like clusters hanging there
shining like mercury in the mountain wind,
when late in the day, you no longer
see beyond the wild guava trees,
the stumbling moths, how the light
edges the West Maui mountains,
how it spreads finally over
the sea at Mā`alaea where the tall
windmills line up down slope,
white blades cutting the air—
white, they say, to save the Shearwaters,
the Hoary bats and the Nēnē geese
that would tangle in that whirling power.
Those days, you often wished, like Hina,
that the sun would burn through
the cloud canopy, flood the mountain
with glorious light, but not this day.
You offer, instead, a water prayer
for the kind of rain they call kili`ohu,
the finest misty rain, while hot spots
smoke and flare nearby,
kili`ohu for smoldering Lāhaina,
that 45-minute blowtorch inferno
fueled by an 80 mile an hour wind,
the kind they call ka ua `ula,
a coconut splitting wind that took all—
that densely built tinderbox
plantation town, gone—
now called the burn zone.
But long before that, it lay in the shade of
breadfruit trees (i ka malu `ulu o Lele)
so lush, for ten square miles,
the sun could not break through
its heavy green umbrella.
It was called the Venice of the Pacific
with its canals and prodigious rainfall,
its taro terraces, fishponds—
wetlands and fast-running streams.
Now we join together
each day at noon wherever we are,
an echo chamber for lost souls,
to offer a water prayer,
the song, the dance,
the call of the drum, our refuge:
O, grant us clouds,
the water collected upon the taro leaf,
the water from above; urge on the healing,
even as the brutal ash work continues,
even as the heat from the scorched earth rises
and dead birds fall from the sky.
Return our fast-running streams,
our wetlands, we pray,
give us cool misty rain.
Spare us the heavy downpours that
would sink deep into ash polluting the soil—
the dark run off filling the living sea.
Rather, let the mist roll over the scorched land.
Let it fill the shadowy places
in our hearts, the catacombs of grief.
Let the wetlands return,
the mango, papaya, the breadfruit,
the living spirit of the land.
O, grant us clouds,
kili `ohu, the finest misty rain
and keanu, one cool breeze
to wrap around us all –
And help us know what else
the returning do when
we are tired of elegies,
when bone dust and feathers
still hang in the air.
- Adele Ne Jame
Honolulu, Hawai’i