1.
He ui. He nīnau.E ui aku ana au iā ʻoe:
Aia i hea ka wai o Lahaina?Where high bent forests in fog?Where cloud cover? Where rain?Where full stream flow freed?
Aia i hea ka wai o Lahaina?Not in the dry kahawai wherethe waters should run to flowover all the roads that wereblocked and detoured to Pō.
Aia i hea ka wai o Lahaina?Not above where dark cloudsshould be black with wai, andemptying to white until whitemeans empty, waiting to be filled.
Aia i hea ka wai o Lahaina?Some remains in the thin veins of Kanahā,Kahoma, Hālona, and Kāuaʻula.Barely in the warm breath of Kilihau, Pōhakea, or ʻImihau, in the dry wheezes ofHulialopali, Waiuli, or Wehelaunu.Some in nā ua Kilihau me Kapāʻūpili if they come.No longer in Mokuhinia.No longer a lei for Mokuʻula.
Drought is an old war.
2.
Aia i hea ka wai o Lahaina?
Wind rufflesthe surface of the ocean
the tide is lowthe bare reef exposed
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in the distancehow sharp
the peaks of the western mountains
as Lele and Laha ʻāina became Lā hainā.
They planned our thirst for centuries.
3.
Eō e nā kupa o Lahaina:
we uē with you,aloha with you.
Kaumaha claws inside usfor the dead forced to bury themselves,
for the missing, for the swaths of blackand benzene that bled into the wai,
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for everyone bleeding ash.We uē for generations.
Watch us light propane stoves and cookvenison on hibachi, clean and share fishfrom our lawaiʻa, kalo from our mahiʻai,everything sweet and green from māla,from kumulāʻau still standing elsewhere,thousands of scoops of rice—
watch us feed each other.
Watch us make our own supply routesfrom flatbed trucks, jet skis, and boatsfor cots, diva cups, tents, tarps, gas cans,headlamps, walkie talkies, blankets,diapers, and generators
and bottles and jugs and barrels of wai
Watch our medics practice consent.Slow and mahalo. Watch our constellationof Venmo’s and GoFundMe’s shine.Watch every kupuna, every keikitreasured, every ʻohana taken in long afterthe expired hotel and airbnb vouchers.
Watch us protect the water.Watch us make our own puʻuhonua.Watch us teach them how.
4.
Aia i hea ka wai o Lahaina?
as we pule, uē, and rage, pule, uē, and rage,wai flows and weaves memory and dream–our wai maka feed the soil
and sing the rains of Maui awake.
We will grieve.
We will grieve.
We will grieve.And piʻi ka huhū.
And we will still be gentle with each other.
The Maʻaʻa breeze is steady.We will teach them how again and again.
We can’t say enough to speak backthe naheleof Kula,the noe,the ao hiwahiwa,the punato gentlydrawwaidownthesegrassyslopes.
We can’t speak back.the loʻi kalo,the ʻulu,the ʻuala,the kumulāʻau,the lives,lands,andwaterslost.
But we can keep asking:Aia i hea ka wai o Lahaina?Aia i hea ka wai o Kula?Aia i hea ka wai o Maui?Aia i hea ka wai o ka pae ʻāina o Hawaiʻi?
We can tell our keikiwe protect each otherand all we aloha, tell themwe stayed so we can
bring the water back.
We can billow steamuntil it rises so thickits malu, its kilihune, cools and cleans
all of this
ʻāina aloha—
until the wai,
until the wai,
until the wai.
And hū ke ola.
5.
Lahaina, he ʻāina momona.Lahaina, he ʻāina i aloha nui ʻia.E ola Lahaina. E ola i ka wai.
(This poem originally appeared in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World.)
Brandy Nālani McDougallBrandy Nālani McDougall is the author of two poetry collections The Salt-Wind and Ka Makani Paʻakai. She is a professor of American Studies specializing in Indigenous Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Dana Naone HallDana Naone Hall is a Native Hawaiian poet and the author of Life of the Land: Articulations of a Native Writer, which received the 2018 American Book Award. She lives on the island of Maui.
No‘u RevillaNoʻu Revilla is an ʻŌiwi poet and educator. Her debut book, Ask the Brindled, won the 2021 National Poetry Series and the 2023 Balcones Prize.