Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research

Recollection

It doesn't matter now
in the shadows of Mauna Kea
that you live below mountains
 folded out of the land
and you only call me on those days
we are allowed to remember
Lahaina and Los Angeles.
In California, your syllables echo
in the halls of hospitals
and you read texts on cellular morphology
and have watched three people die;
while in Hilo, I am still trying
to form words that reach across classrooms,
to find the secret places
of the small-leaved maile,
and to stop being afraid
in the abrupt shadows of rocks in water,
even though I know the silence.
You still want me to forget
the boy for whom I burned the senko
twenty-seven months after the ocean
had flooded the cilia in his lungs.
You still try to take the sadness
from my words, forgetting
that in Los Angeles
I saddened you
as my words grew softer and softer
until even you could only touch
their bones curving on the paper.

Lava

Outside, the days end
without wind, after afternoons
like those they have in Kona
when the pores of black a'a'
fill with the heat of the sun.
But here, in this small room
among the stone markers of Nuuanu,
someone has left senko burning:
the straight line reaching up
out of the grey ash,
the red glow marking the moments
until this line also
disappears into ash
and a force in the darkness
moves the pale grey smoke
like the curve of pahoehoe
beneath the vines
of the green-flowered pakalana.
 

                      —————————————
 

In Winter Tones of Wind

I speak the seven syllables of your name
Beneath these trees that grow alone
On the ridges of the Koolaus
And their leaves shake like origami cranes
In the November wind.
 

Upon Your Departure

Close against you this last time
I hear the time beat within you
and the great silence of your breath
but you touch the strands of my hair
and here in this crowd of strangers,
my body curves
into the shelter of your bones.

                      —————————————
 

Dark with the Scent of Senko

The stars form patterned pictures
but the words you spoke,
lying on the grass in Waimanalo,
find no reflection in this room
dark with the scent of senko.
You taught me to see through shadows,
to touch the light in your hard bones,
to hear stories beyond the stars.
But now you can only be remembered.
And I keep forgetting that all
that's left of your warm body
and your gentle giant hands
is kept in this metal box in Nuuanu,
a box that I could cradle in my own hands.

Laurie Kuribayashi graduated from the William S. Richardson School of Law of the University of Hawaii and clerked for Chief Judge Emeritus Samuel P. King of the Federal District Court of the District of Hawaii after graduation. Kuribayashi's legal practice is focused on real estate and finance. She has taught contracts, creative writing, composition, and literature at the University of Hawaii. Her poetry has appeared in journals and magazines, both in the United States and Japan. She was born in El Paso, Texas, and grew up in Hawaii. She now lives and practices law in Honolulu, Hawaii.
"In Winter Tones of Wind" was first published in Hawaii Review (1979); "Lava," Upon Your Departure," "Recollection," and "Dark with the Scent of Senko" were first published in Hawaii Review (1981).