Day 68: our mother

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