Yesterday we went to Hana, Hana means the end. As in the end of the world. As in closed. Pau. But the unpaved road itself, festooned with 7000 potholes, continues on eleven more torturous miles to the seven pools of the seven virgins. I took a photo of a young girl crouched at the lower lip of the last pool, appropriately called the Virgin.
It is a long ride back from Hana, in each canyon, the foliage is more spectacular than the last. Bamboo forests, Ohia, silvery and glistening in the mist. Rain shadow, This area gets 400 inches a year and keeps the green blaze verdant. We gaze out to a rocky settlement, where my neighbor George Howell’s uncle who was the island’s only doctor lived. He was overly fond of the drink so you took your chances with the relative sobriety of Dr. Howell.
I went out to the 16-mile marker from Paia where WS Merwin lives, remembering the road down the ridge to the sea. I found a stalk of tuberose that someone had left. A new grave at the top of the Pali, the only clue, a rusted chain and a heart-shaped metal Hawaii dog license. Someone’s beloved pet overlooks the ancient Hawaiian harbor that WS Merwin has protected from the world for so long.
This is the place that Will Staple took me to, where the deep music of the surf boulders rang a cacophony of bells beneath the waves. There is a leanto on the beach. Hawaiians still use this place, it still has the magic. Wild orchids tumble off the edge of a cliff, the blue surprise of tropical sea against the darkness of lava. In the mango forest there is an ancient Hawaiian village buried under dense jungle foliage. We explored it as we gathered mangoes. Clouds of fruit flies followed us, jealous of our bounty. The garden terraces were still growing stands of taro plant.
On the way to Hana I swam at a waterfall pool which was the perfect temperature, the water falling from the cloud forests of Haleakalā, mirrors the green harmony of the forest. And then a man named Michael who dove from the cliff 20 feet or more above me, led me to a secret hole behind the waterfall. I had to step in and down 2 1/2 feet, and then lean back up into the hole until I was behind the waterfall. The hole, small and dark, was filled with all my unknown childhood closet monsters.
Maui the Mischievous, fished these islands up from the sea. Haleakalā, house of the sun where Maui stood to share the sun and slow its passage across the sky so his mother, Hana could work the tapa cloth. Haleakalā peeks out once, on the way home, where the peninsula juts out into the sea.
When the fog lifted, revealing the eye of the Iao Needle, small white bird circled, giving a sense of scale to the West Maui mountains. I gathered fallen plumeria blossoms and tossed them into the rivers. Whitewater, Kea, as soon as the fog had lifted, the rains began, but paradise is like that, only revealing a fraction of her bounty at a time. You have to be ready for it To stare into that terrible beauty of Medusa turned men into stone. Her hair fell into the sea. This is how the coral came to be.
There are living stones wrapped in ti leaves at every site I stop at. I take photos, and I touch the stones for good luck. They are warm, like sleeping cats. Everywhere stray cats and warm stones. I carry peridot and olivine stones from South Point with me to Haleakalā. Is it is not from the volcano? Someone says the tears of Pele. I hope that Pele will understand my need for green stones. I will share them with the children. We will write poetry, adding to the deeper mystery of stone.
They say the stones speak guttural low whispers. Certainly they’ve taught the rivers here how to speak. Somewhere above me is Pu’u Kukui, it rises up some 5788 feet. Pu’uhonua, place or sanctuary of kukuis, oil for the bodies of the fallen Hawaiian warriors who fell, blocking the streams. Candlenut trees to oil the bodies of the ali’i, the royalty, whose bones still sleep in these mountains.
Some blue sky at last. Finally the voices are upon me and I feel the stirrings of a poem asking for the lips of speech. I am an imperfect receiver. Sometimes they come, and I cannot hear them, but I am mouthpiece, I savor the words in my mind, rolling them like small warm stones against the sea, polishing them until I can build a structure of language, of thought, a dwelling for the tired heart to speak to seek solace, or find refuge.
On White Hill Pu’ukea I created a circle, dropping the olivine crystals in the four directions beginning in the north, without thinking, it seems natural. Looking out over the crater, I see the bosom of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, the long mountain, I can even make out Cook’s Bay, and Kealakekua. I think of Oleg and Eddie in turn.
Last time I was here, I rode up the mountain with Will Staple and Gary Snyder in the very same truck I was injured in. Sitting beside Gary Snyder was a trying experience as he tends not to relate well to women. However, his presence, the cold, is magnetic, powerful. We come to terms with it all.
Sitting zazen next to him in the Maui zendo, I lost all recollection of time—45 minutes, maybe an hour of my life disappeared. He drew me in along with him, on the powerful riptide of Satori.
We dropped Gary off at Halemau’u trail, and we hiked down into the crater via the Sliding Sands trail. Sword plant was in bloom and all the cinders you could fix on in one crater, a lunar landscape—lava like the crest of a standing wave.
