The Bard of Ka`a`awa

 

She was sitting on a rock wall in front of the small beach at Swanzy in Ka`a`awa, writing in a notebook. I wondered who she was, so earnestly scribbling. In front of her were three bags, one from Target, faded. Lilith and I stood some distance from her when she began to talk. "I have telepathy with animals," she told us (though she never once looked at Lilith). Behind her was a reef formation at low tide that she told me was a lion; the head was cut off just to the left and above it. Her father had been murdered--he was Arthur--and came to her by way of sand drawings. I was standing on one just then. I quickly moved my feet, but she said it was ok. Her voice was fast, English, and urgent. There was a large vertical, bending line in her forehead, beneath gray hair. Her father complained that he had to carry her on his shoulders, explain everything to her, but he'd responded when she asked the ʻĀina for answers. He carried a lion. But now she was here and she knew. There had been sea shell gatherers in the Pacific, women, who were attacked from behind by gorillas and raped. The product of these "unions" were creatures that were only part human. Some had three heads, others--the ones near the Hygienic Store down the coast--had half a human head, half bird beak. Those were parrots. There were mo`o involved, and Knights Templar, and lots of violence. Somewhere men had their skin flayed on rocks and bled. She'd taken photographs at Ha`ena on Kauai of a temple where animals lived in the trees, having constant sex. But her phone didn't have a charge. The Mormons called the formation behind her KOLOB, which to her stands for Knock-Out Lobster, though she's not Mormon. Do I know the Edward Lear poem, "Jumblies"? I smile. She'd been in a garden in Punalu`u that was pea green, and there were sieves in the water. She wrote out Pi R squared in the sand, said the two t's were "Turner Temple." Some had left here for Ethiopia, which has HI in it. This very place was at the origin of the world (in one of these sentences English royalty appeared), but the mountains were smelters where everything was built, and this was Atlantis, the lost island. 

 

Lilith started pulling, hard, at her leash, so I patted my heart with my hand and said I had to go. "I'm Susan." "I'm Belinda," she said. Near the end, she said, "I let you say that one thing, about the lion on the mountain" (Crouching Lion). And she was right. I got my few words in, early on.

 

 

The Edward Lear poem can be found here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54364/the-jumblies