Hawai'i Departure

 It never gets any easier to leave these beloved islands and these beloved people. My friend Patricia is on Hospice. Memories came rushing back from our friendship in the years that I spent here in this place that I love so much and I ready myself for the flight back to America. Because to me and I think many others Hawai’i is not America, it was never America, it does not belong to America. It is and should be a nation unto itself.  My heart is breaking and I think not just because of my friend, but all of them and my happiness that I’m able to love this place so much.  I think about returning because I have so many friends I have seen and I got the distinct overwhelming loving feeling that I could come back to a life here with Victoria.

Aloha aina. Malama Pono. 

Hawai’i Return

 I’ve returned to say goodbye to a friend in hospice   It’s difficult to see, to say goodbye but an honor in the same moment.  After landing in Honolulu I dissolved in tears   It is not just my friend  It is returning to my own past and all its attendant memories. I miss this place, people and cultures.  

Then it occurs to me it is also the sadness from the way in which I left in 1999.  I learned my father was dying.  So part of it is my father’s death.  That sadness and sense of being uprooted from everything I had known and grown to love and cultures I had embraced. It was being ripped, torn and up rooted from a life.  So I flew back to my father’s dying and death. The winter of my discontent, to darkness, sadness in unending rain, overcast darkness for months while I waited for my dad to die.  This is my sadness. It was my sadness but is no more. 

One Last Time Go I

 One last time Go I

To the edge of ocean and tide.

where memory and foam obscure the past

and the present bears me far from home.

Healing and threatening

the waves of senselessness and purpose

the beating of my heart

sand between my toes, under my feet

the endless wash and wave of time and tide.

 

This is my heart you and I know.

universal beat of blood and salt

so comforting in the days and nights

while your lovers heart merges

and beats as one.

 

Take me back

Return me now whence I came

the villages and islands of my dreams

faces of all whom I have loved and love.

Saltwater fills my nose and eyes and heart

Is it the Pacific or my tears does it matter the fear . . . 

of what was and will be lost yet gained again.

I shall offer my heart, the loving kindness 

of friendship, the common humanity and every day struggle and joy

and . . . and . . . and we could go on could we not?

So fare well it must be and a welcoming

of something we all must have. 

In the end of the beginning these words have all been said.

In the end is the love we have shared,

the things we have done,

the people cared for, 

the laughter, the music, the films, the drinks.

 

We had some times didn't we . . .

See you.  See you. See you.

On the flip side.

 

One last times go we to the Oceans edge and depths

to let us cradle and rock

in light filled sound of hissing and crackling

and crashing and rocking of our lives.

 

    David McCullough

    April 2024