Red birth
Red earth
Sacred work
Out of the ocean
On the tail of the trickster
Who captured the sun
A single breath
Beckoning eternal possibility
Before you arrived
She sang the hymn of your soul
You’d been traveling
Searching for the song lines
On which to lay your heart
She remembered you
A string of notes sung through water
Gathered through the sound of kohola
And the call of the albatross
Come home to Kohala
The land of kings
Where the winged whales return
Sunset clay fertile and warm
This place will hold your bones
A seed planted outside of time
She will never belong to us
But we may belong to her
Devotees of beauty and aloha
You will know when you are embraced
A gravity in your marrow
A weight that makes you stay, stay, stay
This stewardship is a prayer
May we return to the red earth
Life sprung from the sea
And remember that we are salt in the mist
The shine of the warm black sand
The tangle in the roots of the koa
We are given to this land
May she know herself as free
May it be sung
Hanaula Hanaula Hanaula