The stream is dry where the past drowns

The stream is dry where the past drowns.

From the banks of the periphery

you see the evidence of drought,

sunken souls singing out

from the hollows and the bellows,

from what once bubbled and rolled

into an expanding perception.

From these narrow glimpses

and desperate attempts at control,

the waters flowed, drunk enough to know

the inner workings of letting go.

The fading lines,

there is no one place where this is told.

The valley’s scarred relief

replayed

through sensory expressions

and psychic impressions.

Stepping outside of time

to get a sense of it going by,

marking our places with

what has slipped away.

Beneath darkened leaves

dormant streams rise to a boil.

Dragging with them the bloody soil,

the dislodged once royal stronghold

falling into a mud slide of being sold.

With every year the past drowns a little more.

You’ll see the disappearing crown land,

the desperate hands

clutching the old ways

to hold off and to withstand

the flood tide of change.

Journeying out the way we came,

access diverted, mauka streams defiled,

land tied in military wire.

Under the glass of sprouting cities,

the high rises higher

until far from sight and mind,

the wai ola slips into disorder .

Without its source , the illusion of pure water

crawling over its course

becomes scraped knees on dry beds,

divorced, torn to shreds.

Knowing not which way is up or down,

we find new ways to drown.

In the annals of progress,

under monuments of ownership ,

crushed beneath metal gates

private signs and moral claims,

The crooked lines are what remains.

Upon this land the insatiable hands

have stamped their imprints.

Their words

certify the abuse,

meandering in circles of misuse,

in lies and lonely streams

that flow through

like a tightened noose

of shadow and loose stone.