Call to Prayer

 "Call to Prayer is a poem that attempts capture and portray the experience of standing in the malu of the sacred. Whether that malu is cast by monument, an altar, or a mountain, the poem depicts the kuleana of recognizing our pilina to that which is kapu. The poem travels through the knowledges of faith, courage, devotion, fear, and aloha through the perspective of a Kanaka Maoli wahine who lives in the malu of our kupuna while continuing to endure the ongoing wake of settler colonialism, displacement, and alienation.

The poem intentionally stands in the malu of the Mihrab, Shangri La's most sacred artifact. And in her magnificent shadow we come face to face with her certain theft and current violent misdirection. We cannot look away, not from her outstanding beauty, and certainly not from the generations of violence that has allowed us to be in her unconsenting company. The Mihrab powerfully calls us back to our own sacred places, and in that moment we are invited into a mutual recognition, an unexpected intimacy between peoples, ʻāina, moʻolelo."

 

 

 

Call to Prayer 

Jamaica Osorio, 2021

 

If I have Faith

It is only because 

I know what it means 

to stand at the foot of a mountain

my whole body a prayer 

the whole island a monument 

and to see

the piko

shining through the mist 

I still feel her before me

Even from hundreds of miles away

Anytime I have the strength to look to the horizon 

 

If I have courage

It is only because 

I have watched our moʻolelo remake themselves in my generation

I have seen an island born from pō

From a whisper in the quietest parts of ourselves, 

Here 

A promise that we refuse to forget or forsake 

That this place is ours

Only so much as this place is us

And I have held it in my hands,

The birthing of our worlds

Pō, turned light, turned pūko’a, turned slime turned gods in a time of mere men

I have watched the call of the intrepid summon Manaeakalani

every morning 

in the hands of our kuaʻana

Maui, fishing us each 

One by one from the dark sea of this forgetting 

 

If I have devotion

it is only because 

I have traveled into the poli of our akua

I have crossed the piko

from wākea to wākea 

and sailed upon the dark and shining road of kāne 

deep into the realm of our ancestors 

and I have returned, 

with the knowledge that to  lay in the bosom of our kūpuna 

is to commit yourself to the prayer of memory 

to cast your eyes upon Kuehaelani 

and to pull her shimmering body from the skin of the sea 

 

If I have anger

It is only because 

I know the stories of our loss

Kiʻi burnt to ash 

Stones and koʻa removed

Now the foundations of Billionaire estates 

I am aware 

That nearly anywhere we walk 

We are trampling upon the ʻiwi of our kūpuna

 

I know the moʻolelo of the hundreds of thousands dead and dying

I have seen the signs of the separating sicknesses 

Born again, like Haumea, in every Hawaiian generation 

I know the names of the thieves

The crooks in finely sewn suits 

Praying to their capital 

As they pillage 

And loot our holy cities 

Leaving us with nothing 

But a whisper of what we once believed

 

And yet I still have aloha 

But only because

I am still here

With all my kūpuna beside me

And when I stand in your malu 

You 

Tower over me, like a recollection 

Like a mountain 

With so many stories I will never know

In languages I will never speak 

Thousands of miles away from your home

And the ʻāina and alchemy that made you

The hands that formed you

Like an island, consecrated 

You are here 

Pointed even in the wrong direction

A desecration 

And still your kaumaha 

Is not foreign to me

You feel more family 

Than stranger 

And in your magnificent shadow 

I hear our calls to prayer