[BL] When Time Comes

There are some rains that do not fall from clouds.

They rise first from the earth,

from the dark-rooted places

where the kalo sleep with their feet in water,

where the valley keeps the names

of those who once pressed their palms

into the mud

and asked the land to remember them.

Waipiʻo knows these rains.

The cliffs gather them softly.

The ʻōhiʻa drink them whole.

The lehua open like small red hearts

against the green breath of the mountain,

refusing the silence of stone.

And somewhere above the trail,

where the forest deepens into old shadow,

the maile reaches.

Not quickly.

Never quickly.

It searches the way tides search black sand,

the way mist searches the mouth of a valley,

the way certain stars return

to the same piece of ocean

without needing to ask the sky for directions.

One strand finding another

in the dark.

One breath answering another

before either realizes

it has spoken.

The elders say the valley listens hardest

just before dawn,

when the rain pauses between worlds

and the waterfalls become silver threads

binding the cliffs to the sleeping earth below.

If you stand very still then,

you may hear the wings of the ʻaukuʻu

moving low over the loʻi,

or catch the scent of crushed maile

carried down from the high wet forests,

sweet in the way memory is sweet,

sweet in the way longing is sweet,

sweet in the way something unfinished

still reaches.

And if the mist parts for only a moment,

you may see two figures

walking where the river bends toward the sea,

close enough that their shadows touch,

unhurried beneath the watching rain.

Not searching.

Not lost.

Only following the ancient knowing

of roots beneath flooded earth,

of waves returning to the same shore,

of the moon calling quietly

to everything willing to rise.

Because some souls are not born

to meet only once.

Some are woven like maile,

so completely together

that even the valley,

even the rain,

cannot tell where one ends

and the other begins.