Once a month I go down to the local Hawaiian garden and spend 8 hours cleaning, planting and cultivating
Spend quality time with the mother I was given before birth
Mother earth
Here, We trade stories through skin
I mix Hawaiian sweat like salt into dirt pools holding the only things we Hawaiian ever needed
While she teaches me something about perfection
About sustainability
About beauty
Once a month I bruise my knees for my mother
Hold haloa, kalo, our staple
Like holding life
Pulling tangled weeds like strands of tangled hair just so she can breathe
Once a month I am brown from palm to palm
From heart to skin
Mixing myself into her
We must not be confused
The lands sustains us
We do nothing but mix her blood and tend her roots
just try to keep her happy,
Against our lifestyle contractions we try to keep her breathing
Hoping she takes what I can give and I have enough for her to live
Once a month
I am Hawaiian
Indigenous
The original
She who holds the land
She who cares for life
Once a month I am The green that came before recycling
You see Our ancestors have been saying since our birth that life is cyclical
That our actions send ripples in every direction
And if we didn’t realize it then, we sure do now
You see this is global warming
The process has been underway for centuries and we would have known if only we were listening
If only we were watching…
Because The sea level is rising casting shadows on our tomorrows
And in Hawaii that means more than receding shorelines to make inland beachside properties
It means Atlantis
IN Hawaii sustainability used to be the only option
With deep water harbors only harboring fish and reef without the importing steam ships
Bringing pollution and causing 100% dependence
We used to play conservation games like our lives depended on it while our parents never doubted that they did
My father tells me that Freedom
comes with responsibility
And we’ve forgotten
Forgotten how to spread seeds with bare fingertips
Feed an island with palms and hearts
Planting souls into the earth but now
The soles of our shoes only tears the shouts of our trees
Our bare lands feed only dirt to our oceans causing more pollution
Tell me how to breathe
Because there’s something in the air
Something in my water
And I’ve been told I cant swim because of the pesticides
All because We played follow the leader into lifestyles we found initial interest in
Based on half truths and too many blind eyes
They said, the chemicals would make our lives easier, but what about our mother
Our earth
Did we know we would sacrifice her
Were we tricked and played
Or were we selfish
Either way
We’ve been left with chaos and an initiative for organic produce and meat
Why does it seem like were stepping backwards in to trades that worked for yesterday
Because life is cyclical!
Our breathes reach more than tomorrows
Our words mean more than yesterdays
And our actions
are our only chance at bringing peace to these islands
You see Eventually, we will all be islands
And I
want to make sure I leave enough of myself in this soil
that after I have no breath for her
no spit, no blood, nothing but tattered roots and broken bones that my dust and ash will ensure
she stills stands a chance at life
I want to be that difference
And that
Takes more than once a month
The earth, our mother, needs more than hybrids
More than a recycling plants, more than what we have been giving
she needs love
And we
Hold that love in our fingertips
Have the ability to Trade sweat for calluses
And leave brail tattoos on each other
To make a difference and imprint like individualize fingerprints
Have the chance to leave your story for her to tell your future children
Trade work
For hopefully a tomorrow
Trade prayers, apologies for a dying chance
And that’s all we have
Because we’ve wasted all these years trying to learn to fly
And leave her behind
why haven’t we trying to kiss her soil with our stems
we have these roots for a reason
but while trying to keep our hands clean it seems we have forgotten how to use them
but what about the land?
Why is it when push comes to shove she’s the one who falls through the cracks
Do we even still have a chance
What will be the difference?
What will it take?
At what point are we safe?
I know, I have more questions than answers
And I wont pretend to hold a solution to global warming
But I do know how to ask for forgiveness
I do know how to fold dirt into praying hands
And beg for another chance
And I
Will do my best
To beg my mother for tomorrow more often than once a month
More often than 12 times a years
Because she is not waiting for us any longer
She will not wait for me to realize my faults
She will not answer to our hybrids, our reefer handbags, or our vegetarianism
We will ALWAYS BE THE ONES answering to her
If she, after all we have done to her, decides to forgive and still call upon us as her children
