There was a wind
that begins with suspicion
and by the end
turns a whole valley black .
It passes through the realm of sleep
whispering through
the grasses of a past
that couldn’t be kept underneath.
Like a subtle stirring
in the sea before
the approaching
hurricane turns
the peace and sanctity
to waves of heat
breathing deeply through the trees.
Before there was fire there was fear
and it seared itself into consciousness,
it was insatiable, inescapable.
Dry tinder cracks the hills
and exposed cinder
scratched an inferno
from the billowing smoke
blackening the skies.
It reached the fear lines
on the edges of community,
a vestige of safety
if there was only time.
This wind that sets the blaze,
that uncaged the phoenix
to fly unobstructed
torching everything in its wake.
Tongues of fire
speak through a riot of color,
exploding from under
the once coastal quiet
that becomes unnaturally vacant.
In a swarth of red dirt and anger
that grasps and spreads like a fever,
confusion reigned
and in the calamity
comes the realization that all is gone
as if wiped from memory.
We’re caught in cycles
of endless media scrutiny,
a cacophony of lies where
the opportunistic, disguised as relief,
know the future is malleable and undefined.
Once the dust settles
and the millions of eyes
now fixed on the wildfire
inevitably look away,
the pressure is applied.
2.
I’m wrested awake
as the wind grows in intensity.
The kakea of Manoa,
born out of craters,
let loose from fissures
and overflowing borders.
It runs through the chimes
making curtains into tides,
great gusts of violence
pressed against the silence
prying all sound not held in place.
The scattering of leaves joins
the vagrant scraping of pavement.
Like a deranged rainbow
that flashed across the valley,
this arc diving into the sea,
only to come back around relentlessly.
I wasn’t aware
that this shared wind between islands
carried death on its other end.
Its howling a hallmark
of the recent insomnia,
where the jarring of sirens
brought luminous reflections
to the kitchen windows
like a colorful portal
into the collective pain,
a historic pattern of
old wounds opening
a sleepless suspicion
that it will take everything in the end.
This wind is no longer
in the hands of those
who were born here,
who know the scent as
it runs through the grasses
like an incense in the sacred places.
Now there is only mourning
and burnt out endings,
everything swept into the aftermath
of questionable decisions.
Is there disaster capital
in the passage of wind that
erases everything ?
From where will come the revision?
The old banyan, deeply rooted ,
smolders in ash at its base,
yet still shows glimmers of life,
still holds tightly a community’s dreams.
In the deep reaches of its branches,
in the gentle sway
and rhythmic dances
with the trades the
leaves are no longer blackened
you imagine
once the waking nightmare ends
no longer shriveled by death
and the fate of this place
can be determined again by
those within the reach
of her familiar breath.
It is this wind
that will pick everything up again.
yakskinpocketnotes 