THIRTY-EIGHT

For Tasi (Dotsy)

 

We perform our last rites in

this circle of stones

built by our grandmother

all around she

planted these trees

that are not from here whose

perfumed flowers we have named

and now include in

all of our rituals today

we bury our beloved

aunt not of our blood family

by marriage a papālagi

born to the islands with

no other place

she called home.

 

This is not

a pre-packaged funeral

family digs her grave

family bathes and dresses

her body

writes her life

in one hundred words

or less

raises a tent

sets up chairs while

my sister and I

swelter in the heat

with pelu and clippers

wrenching flower

after flower from the bush

in the middle of the day

you shouldn’t work like this

my father scolds

and I’m so grateful

it’s not him

I’m doing this for.

 

Then comes the day

and the last time

we take her home in

a thread of black cars

winding along the sea

today it shines and rolls

Faga’alu, Fatu ma Futi, Matu’u

Inland past Nu’uuli I

Struggle for the names

of villages I used

to know them all then

finally up the long drive

to the circle of stones where

all the āiga is waiting.

 

I try but cannot hear the man

in the black lavalava

who never knew her

his mumbling phrases from

the Bible fading

behind me is

the place her house

once stood the soil that

folded over her hands

year after year as

she fashioned an

enviable garden

from the impossible bush a

coconut tree where

she trained her

vanilla to climb and bloom

she showed me the

delicate process of pollination

all by hand she said

we make our lives.

 

So now I am waiting

and look above

for annunciation

I am looking

toward seamless

sky trees robed with

vines and falling flowers

when one by one they

arrive: the sega, the

ti’otala, the scruffy mynah

even our white

lulu turns up

for this day a

host of wings descending

to the circle

they stand sharp

eyed and ready

claws on branches

a single pua

twirls toward earth as

the voice of the ‘iao

cries out the eulogy

she would

have loved.

 

VICTORIA NALANI KNEUBUHL