Resident

When we bought this house,
the attic was full of rats
and mynah bird nests,
one in every corner.
Chris calls them Hawaiian crows—
there are similarities:
clever, persistent,
strong-willed.

A year later, despite sealing
every possible entrance—
each hole that once invited critters
to a warm, rain-free refuge—
and despite cutting down
several enormous Christmas Berry trees
along the property line,
invasive, messy,
dropping their berries unasked
into soil and plantings below,
the mynahs persist.

They perch now
in the one remaining berry tree,
just beyond the neighbor’s fence.
They yak and scream,
wheel onto the metal roof,
land, lift, alight again—
noisy, insistent,
as if claiming tenure.

They have reason to seek safety,
though surely we are not
the only suitable refuge
in the neighborhood.

Then one afternoon
we noticed a juvenile ʻio—
the Hawaiian hawk—
perched high above us
in a Norfolk pine.
Straight-backed,
full-bodied trees,
common here,
eighty feet tall
is no exaggeration.
We have four.

There it was,
head swiveling on a muscular neck,
preening, watching,
scouting—
though we did not know it then.

Yesterday, when Chris came home,
the mynahs erupted from the schefflera—
called octopus tree here,
for its rigid pink flower bracts,
a generous provider:
food for songbirds,
flowers for lei.

As the flock scattered,
Chris spotted the hawk—
the juvenile—
swooping down,
clutching one thrashing body
in its talons.

Today the mynahs are frantic,
raising an awful racket.
And I suspect more than one
has become a meal
for this noble raptor
now in residence.

‘Io taking flight ~ bj 2025

Impermanent

As I awaken to this atypically gray day,
I wonder about too many things
to sort into neat little packages of script;
there is chaos, to be sure—
though is it me?
Or have these conditions always persisted,
unperturbed by human minds
that never thought to record them?

We live in magic,
where it’s easy to wonder
whether a thing exists because we regard it,
or because it is fixed—temporarily—
into changing landscapes,
though even those are constantly in flux.

Rivers rise and roil,
casting mammoth chunks
of steel and asphalt from bridges built
decades ago.
When forces move beyond us,
these human-created appendages
become toothpick structures,
perched briefly in pristine places,
inviting more settlers
who are no match, in the balance,
for unpredictably rising waters.

Does beauty exist because we behold it?

If there were no highways,
would the true tenders of wild landscapes
be raptors and bears,
with migrant tribes
the only observers of our kind—
noticing patterns, not recording them,
but sharing what they know
with visitors,
with relations?

We wonder in our time
why so many lived in movable colonies,
though perhaps it makes more sense now,
as we come to realize
nothing is forever,
nothing stable or static.

A friend rushes to her husband’s bedside
in a distant land.
Another loses her home
to wind-driven fires.
Someone else swims a bit too far offshore,
currents inviting him
out and out.

And don’t I remember—
feeling like the Little Mermaid,
body weightless as I flipped and turned,
a castle in the coral below,
colorful whatnots beckoning me farther?

I could be spearfishing,
spotting something I wanted
in those vague, lilting waves.

It’s easy—
easy to lose one’s way
when what we desire
hovers just beyond reach.

Mauna Kea beach ~ bj 2009

Question for the Ages

Some days I look around
at this exquisitely unique planet—
this shimmering blue bead suspended in
what so many dismiss as “outer space,”
as if the cosmos were nothingness—
and I wonder how it came to be overrun
by control freaks bent on damaging
everyone (fellow humans, creatures
of all stripes, the very environment itself—
including the air required for life to continue)
for pieces of paper
they’ve convinced themselves
are worth more than life.

Dollar bills as destiny.
Old-growth forests cut for profit.
Oceans treated as garbage dumps.
People stacked like resources
on their sad little ledgers.
Everything sacred
reduced to a spreadsheet.

And I think,
What am I DOING here?
How did I end up
on this strange orb?

Because sometimes it feels like a mismatch—
me with my open heart,
my instincts tuned to wonder,
my body listening for the hum beneath things
while the world drowns itself
in noise and conquest.

I watch these greedy others tear at the Earth,
building empires on sand,
mistaking control for safety,
greed for success,
excess for abundance—
and I ache with the absurdity of it all.

And still—
the planet remains impossibly beautiful.
A tidepool flashing with galaxies
on the micro scale.
A mountain breathing out
the soft volcanic ash of its making—
the ancient dust of fire and sea.
A mango tree dropping sweetness
into the open palms
of anyone passing by.

How is it
that the Earth hasn’t forgotten who she is?
How has she not given up on us?

Maybe that’s why I’m here—
not to fix the madness,
but to remember what is still holy.
To say:

Look.
This is worth loving.
This is worth protecting.

To hold open the doorway
for anyone who has forgotten
how to feel.

Maybe I’m here
to keep asking the real question
out loud, to no one in particular—
until someone else hears it
echo in their bones:

What are we doing
on this strange,
heartbreaking,
breathtaking planet—
and who might we become
if we finally woke up
to the miracle beneath our feet?

Halaula monstera ~ bj 2019

What Are We Doing Here?

We walk on borrowed ground,
measuring our days in square inches
and fiberglass window screens, forgetting that time—
real time—moves in the unleashing of lava flows,
in the slow polish of river stone.

We may call this progress as we pave
over ancient burial sites,
the already-fractured arteries of Earth’s surface,
preparing it for non-recyclable machines
that burn the same fuel meant to shape suns—
and we call this freedom.

Yet somewhere, under all the noise
and distraction, the old planet—
the one we never knew, the one with animals
and forests we will never see—
hums her patient song,
and the question rises again—
not from despair,
but from a love so vast it aches:
How did we forget
we belong to what we’re breaking?

Walkies under a full moon ~ bj 2025

The Silence Lengthens

I lived four years in the high desert mountains
of New Mexico, the ranch house ringed
by variegated greens of piñon pine,
cedar and Ponderosa, and beyond the forest
lay fields of sage, their silver-gray shimmer
unbroken but for wind, the dark shadows
of ravens, and the occasional red-tail hawk,
magpie, the small, shy kestrel or flash
of a flicker, but never once did I spy
a sage grouse scuttling among the bushes;

If it can be eaten, someone will shoot it.
If it stirs, it is a target.
If it trusts, it is gone.

And what can one say that the land
doesn’t already know; its centuries of plunder,
its beauty still bowing to the steady aim of want;

In Maine, I knew another sound, the woodcock,
rising in spiral flight, a corkscrew hymn to dusk;
now even that small ecstasy is mostly memory;
The men who loved the woods took what they could
until there was little left but deer ticks and stories;
pelts once hung like flags along back sheds and porches,
the bodies discarded as offal, sacrifice without prayer,
one of the oldest, emptiest rituals we know;

And what to say about all of this, really;
the land keeps listening, the wind passes through sage,
through pine, through silence; each season
the breathing slows, the voices grow fewer,
and still,the earth forgives; and somewhere perhaps,
a single grouse remains, holding the whole sorrow
of us in its fragile breast.

 

Sage and piñons of New Mexico, circa 1989 ~ bj

Phoenix Rising

It’s new, it’s not, the bones remember, though I forgot;
another year collapsing into itself like a wave
that folds and folds until the ocean swallows sound;

Was I kind enough? Did I hold the ones I love
without trying to fix their pain? Or did I burn too brightly,
leaving scorch marks where I only meant to warm?

The garden speaks in tongues, the ash and bloom; the plant, half
grown, uprooted by my own hand, learns the secret I’ve resisted,
that even displacement has its song; dust gathers where roots 
once settled, as a single green shoot pushes through; not in triumph,
but in quiet insistence, its pulse thrumming, begin again, begin again;

I stand among the ruins of last season’s self, unsure
which memories I should water, which to let dry and filter
back to earth; everything feels both tender and undone,
and I know this cycle, I’ve walked through fire enough times
to feel its language to my core, the crackle, the flare, the sudden
letting go; these are not destruction, but transformation;
a feather of smoke, a sigh of wind, the shape of renewal forming
in the haze; love lies somewhere between surrender
and spark, where risk opens the door to light;

In this threshold hour, I lift what remains of my wings, singed
and broken, not golden and shimmering as before, 
but strong enough to rise through the embered air, 
singing into grace what I can, while naming nothing as loss.

shoots – bj 2025