Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research

My Uncles Surfing at Waikiki

They are young in this picture.
Their lean hard bodies are erect
in the style of their place and time,
hair blown back as they race toward
the camera on long redwood boards.
Behind them Diamond Head
is bare but for the ironwoods
along the wide white stripe
of beach, the outline of cliffs
and gullies offset by clouds
mingled with spray and rolling foam.
They are gone now, these hapa-haole boys
at play on a wind rippled summer wave.

Maalaea Bay

These waves have kept their same shape
for who knows how long, rising over
shallow reef and heaving white crests
toward blue recesses of the inner bay.
There are little differences now,
like this backwash off the seawall
guarding a string of condominiums
 sprung from parched red dust ashore.
The kiawes were cut back to border
windblown acres of green sugar cane.
Small boats motor out, bound for deep
fishing grounds beyond Kahoolawe.
Across from the harbor the old store
still sells its famous hot dogs,
but the quiet in this evening sky
whispers of a coming dark, expansion
and rock groins to block new waves
from reaching the gentle arc of reef.
This bay is a haven for endangered
green sea turtles, their leathery heads
bobbing along inshore currents,
their flippers extended like wings.
A surfer watches blue waves advance
from the breakwall, feels the first
lift him as it passes under his board,
remembers when he first paddled out
into this bay thirty years before.
He pushes into a wave and feels wind
sear his face as he leans to keep
from falling, holding his edge high
in the wave as he rides to calm water.
His legs feel like taut springs again,
they absorb the quick chatter of offshore
wind dimples under his speeding board.
He guides a line sliding to the blue bay,
climbing in steep pockets of water,
the white crest closing on his shoulder
as he rides beyond aging, past changes
indelibly etched and yet to come,
hurtling toward a place without time.

The Waking Stone

The sharks here cannot be trusted.
Poisons in their meat make them crazy,
they feel no bond of loyalty or kinship
nor any longer honor the ancient ways.
Living seas near shore are stained
with runoff from the burning fields,
effluents open like brown dark flowers
and coax the grey swimmers to frenzy.
Spirit warriors are returning to land,
they stand and cast a spectral gaze
over plains now littered with debris.
On the seventh green of a golf course
an old one rises from under the cup
and scatters caddies like reef fish,
a trail of balls and putters and bags.
Another comes after hours and stands
among white columns in a restaurant,
watching where dolphins swim circles
in a lagoon cut from ancestral ground.
 Canoes slide silent before the dawn,
their wakes trail long white phosphors
dancing over the backs of dark waves
like fires to light the coming day.

Clouds, Trees & Ocean, North Kauai

In Haena's cerulean sky today
the cirrus clouds converge upon
a point beyond the summer horizon, all
hurtling backward: time
drawn from this world as our
master inhales.

The ironwoods lean down their dark needles
to the beach, long strings of
broken white coral and shells that ebb
to the north and west, and wait
dreaming the bent blue backs of waves.

To My Brother in San Juan

Today the stillness
in the mountains whispers
into town, dark valleys
so lush they seem to undulate,
a chant of ancient names.
Trade winds rise slowly,
lifting forests into light.
I know something of time
outside these islands,
there are consolations.
But the nearness of an ocean
is something we both need.
On a hill in France, in
a town called Manosque,
I crossed streets that fell
into fields of lavender,
and I turned each time
expecting the azure sea.
I knew then I wouldn't leave it
for long, nor understand
how people live without
feeling its presence, are
never inside it to feel skin
as a membrane between oceans.
I drove past the harbor
on the way home today,
and the first little north
was slipping in over the ledge.
By morning long waves
will feather over the same reefs
as ever when we remember the islands.

Michael McPherson was born in Hilo, Hawaii in 1947. He obtained his B.A. (1974) and M.A. (1976) degrees from the University of Hawaii at Manoa where he edited and published the literary journal HAPA from 1980 to 1983. He is the author of a poetry collection, Singing with the Owls (Petronium Press, 1982) and a novel, Rivers of the Sun (South Point Press, 2000). In 1988 the Hawaii House of Representatives honored McPherson for his contributions to Hawaii literature while he was attending his first year of law school at Lewis & Clark in Portland, Oregon. His poetry, short fiction, essays and reviews have appeared regularly in Hawaii's literary journals and anthologies since 1979. McPherson is a solo practitioner on the Big Island of Hawaii concentrating in criminal defense.
"The Waking Stone" has appeared in Chaminade Literary Review, Bamboo Ridge, and Eric Chock (ed.), Growing Up Local: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose from Hawaii (Bamboo Ridge Press, 1998). "Maalaea Bay" first appeared in Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing and in American Nature Writing, 1994 (Sierra Club Books, 1994)(John A. Murray ed.). "To My Brother in San Juan" first appeared in The Paper and along with "Clouds, Trees & Ocean, North Kauai," which first appeared in Hawaii Review, appears in McPherson's collection of poetry, Singing with the Owls (Petronium Press, 1982).