The bench on Alakea Street, Sunday morning

"Are you a visitor?" asked the woman next to me at a bus stop on Alakea Street. She was an old woman, bent-shouldered, who wore a straw hat with a lavender lei around the brim. Her dress was blue, or lavender, and white, and her calves gave evidence she walks. I said no. She pointed up at a tree, said "fairy terns." I looked and saw flashes of white feathers on a lower branch. "They don't build nests," she told me, "just lay their eggs on the branches." She had very clear eyes. "The bird's eyes are blue," she said, "with what resembles eye-liner around them." Look, she added, they're about to fly away, and they did. But down the street--she pointed--more will fly this way. She was going to Kailua, and then to a family reunion at the North Shore. Her sister lives in Volcano, and she did, too.