Leialoha Apo Perkins is a retired professor of Hawaiian studies from the University of Hawai‘i who holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. A poet, short-story writer, novelist, editor and scholarly critic, she is the author of Kingdoms of the Heart, Histories in Stone, Wood, Bone (poetry), Natural, Firemakers and Other Short Stories of Hawai’i, the Sāmoas, and Tonga (short stories), The Oxridge Woman (novel) and editor of the two volumes of the Journal of Hawaiian and Pacific Folklore and Folklife Studies.
I will not hold my breath
as the ocean rolls its long
and silver tongue sweeping to death
the land in lilting song.
I will not shut my eyes
to the rags of spindrift
the shark’s clean cruising streak
and how the ‘Iva flies
crying
from cliff to littoral.
Waving seaweeds desolate
in dance I know and I know not
because there is a singing in everything
and green is the colour of the heart.