Donovan Kūhiō
He Inoa No Kaleiililani
after Claude Monet’s Haystacks series
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Hilinaehu)
On the morning you are born, a loop of yellow yarn rests at the edge of the kitchen table, dreaming about constellations.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Hilinama)
I see pō, not as an ending, but as a promise. I see it in the stillness of your sleep. Pō is the womb of creation, the place where all beginnings return. One day, you will enter it, but not today. Today, you are the light born from its depths.
I hear your breath in the rustling of hala leaves, the murmur of roots reaching into deep soil. Life begins in the dark, beneath the earth, beneath the weight of generations. One day, your roots will split the stone, but for now, you are still.
Stillness is its own kind of growth.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (ʻIkuwa)
Daughter,
You came on the wind that bends hala and shakes the mountains loose—a breath from the ancestors, carried in your mother’s body. Like a chant waiting for release.
Your name slipped from our tongues like salt from the sea, like the rain that cleans Puʻuokapolei’s dust.
It was there, already written, inside the caves of my chest, beside my grandfather’s voice and my mother’s hands.
I think of you now, cradled in the belly of this land, how the stars settled over that morning light, how the earth paused long enough to listen.
Child, they will tell you
The struggle is yours to inherit,
But this morning, let me hold
The weight of all that
Until your hands are stronger.
Here is my heart—
It beats for you,
Even when the wind stops.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Welehu)
Kaleiililani, you are a song we did not know we already knew. You carry the names of our kūpuna in the lines of your palms, in the rhythm of your heartbeat. I want to tell you that the world will try to press its weight onto you, try to reshape you into something smaller. But you are made of ocean and stone, of rain that feeds the valleys. No one can take that from you.
Your mother and I whisper your name to the stars, and they gather closer, listening.
You are here. You are here. The land has waited for you, and so have we.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Makaliʻi)
The way your first cry cracked the silence, small and defiant, like a shell breaking open. You smelled of the ocean, of salt and something older than time. We held you, and it was as though we had always known the weight of you—your body curling against ours like a leaf finding its place in the wind.
The room was filled with your mother’s quiet strength, her eyes heavy with joy and exhaustion. She watched you like she’d grown you from her own prayers.
When you cry, it is the sudden rain, a blessing caught off guard, a soft wind pushing the water into the hala. I hold you until the downpour slows, until the earth drinks deeply, and the rivers swell.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Kaʻelo)
One day, you will speak your own name into the wind, and the stars will scatter like dust falling at your feet. When the time comes, I will no longer be here to witness it. But I will not mourn. I will know that I stood in the light of your becoming.
Every wave rises to meet its end. This is the way of things. I watch you sleeping, your chest rising and falling like the tide. I wonder how far you will go, how much you will carry, before the sea calls you back.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Kaulua)
In the pōhaku, there is no fear of breaking. The stone knows that time is a gift, that cracks are merely the beginning of something new. When I hold you, I feel the weight of this: that you are my stone, and I am already crumbling.
We build the future on the bones of the past. This is what I will leave you: a body grown blissfully tired, a name worn smooth by time, stories heavy with breath.
Take them.
Shape them into something only you can carry.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Nana)
You have your mother’s toes and cheeks
and that generous ocean swaying
beneath the shine in her eyes.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Welo)
Today I remembered that I must build your crib in the same manner that we kuʻi kalo.
Keep your mind clean, present, and positive.
How easily you feed me this way.
Mai e moe e kuʻu lei ililani.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Ikiiki)
Ili Love, your moʻolelo will be your own, but it will root itself in this ʻāina, in the hands that built your foundation. You are part of this weaving, this lei of lives that stretches far beyond the horizon. Hold it carefully, but without fear. It is yours to carry, and one day, to pass on.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Kaʻaona)
The rope frays, but does not break. In its wear, I see the strength of all who have pulled it before us—tugging against time, against loss, against forgetting. You are the knot at the end, holding us together, reminding me that the cord will always endure.
A lei of unexpected rain on a sunny day (Hinaeaʻeleʻele)
I hum a lullaby, words shaped by the wind, carried through time like the breath of an old chant. Your eyes, still wide with wonder, follow the rise and fall of my voice, your heart learning the beat that binds us to the land, to the sea, to each other.
Donovan Kūhiō is a poet and editor from Puʻuloa, Oʻahu, He is the author of Proposed Additions (Tinfish Press, 2014; reissued in 2024) and his recent work has appeared in When The Light Of The World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through (W.W. Norton), The Slowdown (American Public Media), Poetry, (Poetry Foundation), Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures (University of Hawai'i Press), Poem-a-Day (poets.org) and American Quarterly.
Photo by staff
