Contact Zone
Contact
That’s when two stuff
Touch, yeah?
Just like when the tides come in
And touch the shores
Bringing what it will.
Fish from the deep
Limu from the shores
ʻOpihi from the rocks
Coconuts on the drift
Logs from the continent
People from around the world
Plastics and ʻopala of all sorts.
The shore has no choice
It has to accept
Whatever the tides bring.
Here we are
In this swirling muliwai
Of ideas and manaʻo
Philosophies and spiritualities.
Like the tides
Ebbing and flowing
The shore has no choice.
But we do!
Copyright © 2022 by Imaikalani Kalahele. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 11, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
“As an island nation in the middle of the ocean, we do not control what comes ashore. As Hawaiians, as a people, we can control what we accept.”
—Imaikalani Kalahele
Imaikalani Kalahele
Imaikalani Kalahele is a Hawaiian poet and the author of Kalahele (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002).