Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 2, Number 11, 1 November 1985 — Other Voices [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Other Voices

By Hayden Burgess Trustee, Oahu At times, we must pause in our daily struggles to listen to other voices speaking in other forms. Poetry is in the best tradition of our people and I am pleased to share some by a woman very close to me — Puanani Burgess.

'Awapuhi Mama loved the scent of the wild yellow ginger growing thick on the slopes of Tantalus. In its blooming season, she would walk up that steep, curvey road to piek two or three. These she would weaue into a brooch, to be pinned to the inside of her blouse — hidden, but for that warm perfume. On the day she was buried she wore a lei of wild yellow ginger, freshly picked from the slopes of Tantalus, And left for me, in a b lue shoe box, a thousand, neatly-woven, dry, fragrant brooches. On Naming Children She had been warned by ber grandmother, long before the birth of her first child, and her second child, that the names of birds should not be the names of children: "Lele ka manu. " She named her first child 'Iwalani, after the soaring beaufy of the black-winged, blood breasted man-of-war bird: This child died of leukemia: "Lele ka manu. " She name her s econd child Iolani, after the cloud-piercing flight of the royaI hawk: This child died of war: "Lele ka manu. " ("The bird always flies away. ")