birds

the last stanzas from the Tongan poet, Konai Helu's poem "Take Off"

when was 

the first time

birds learnt to fly?

i know it was when I began

to write

It has been so difficult for me to write this week. I have so much anxiety and doubts if my life is ok. But I am going to take a starting point here and trust myself and take off

  

I went to the Berkeley pier this morning. The pier is what we call in Tonga, uafu, or wharf. The Berkeley pier is as wide as a neighborhood street and extends a mile into the ocean. People fish on its sides and folks take walks along its concrete floor. Bicycles and vehicles are prohibited.

At the pier, there is a panoramic view of the rusty red Golden Gate Bridge in front of you and

the  silver Bay Bridge, extending from San Francisco's nest of squished tall buildings, towards Oakland on your left hand side. Behind you are Berkeley and Oakland's neighborhoods, climbing up hills towards the sky.

The promise that the pier offers, is that these points of interest can be seen, but they are far away. There is no need to reach them.  Instead, the pier offers you to flirt with the fisherpeople, laugh hysterically at your lonliness, follow the ducks on the waves and enjoy the company of seagulls. 

When I first moved to Berkeley in November 2008, I loved seeing, smelling and touching, lightly, the flowers I walked by. They were beautiful! Camellia, calla lily, rose, lehua, daffodil, fuschia, freesia, gardenia, magnolia, rosemary, clover, shameless yellow dandelion, cactus, lemon.  

November turned to January and I still couldn't find a job. I missed my friends and the independent life I lived in Massachusetts. We moved to Berkeley because Niko wanted to live closer to family. I missed the joy of having my own apartment where I could lie on the couch for an entire afternoon and hang out by myself. I didn't know anyone in this new town, all the people I met were my sister's friends and colleagues. I was tired of feeling that I was starting all over again.

By February, I didn't care to notice the flowers anymore. I was tired of their beauty at the time of my personal misery. I wasn't interested in admiring their colors and textures. I walked by them and quietly said, "Shut up you stupid flowers." These flowers meant nothing anymore to me. I vowed to myself, "When I finally get the hell out of Berkeley, I will go to a new place and make new flower friends and enjoy and love those flowers. Fuck you spoiled rotten, we-get-sunshine-all-year-round flowers."  

Then I remembered. When I was in Tonga in the mid-90s, returning after immigrating to the U.S. with my family in 1981, it was very difficult. I had returned by myself and, at the time, I had forgotten how to speak Tongan.  I saw myself as a young, radical feminist political activist, an identity that, like in the U.S., annoyed and repulsed people in Tonga. giggles. As hard as I tried, nobody talked to me except the white Peace Corps kids from the U.S. (hehe, very funny memories) I take full responsibility for my countless identities that frustrated the Tongan people. giggles. Nevertheless, I was extremely lonely and dreamed of having a friend. I remembered breathing in the laukau po'uli, a flower that exudes a musky perfume at night, and cursed my loneliness. 

At that time, I wrote on a small table that I placed on the fale tolo, porch, under the gigantic tamaline, tamarind tree. When I wasn't working, volunteering, washing clothes or clearing the leaves under the mei, breadfruit trees, I sat at this table, drinking instant coffee, and worked hard to write poems. That's where my first batch of poems come from. 

I tipped back the wooden chair I was seated on and talked to a hibiscus bush that entangled itself around a porch post. Its large scarlet buds loved to listen to me read Ana Castillo's poem, "Daddy with Chesterfields in a Rolled Up Sleeve."

This is a long poem, but the hibiscus especially enjoyed the last stanzas:

i speak English with a crooked smile,

say "man," smoke cigarettes,

drink tequila, grab your eyes that dart

from me to tell you of my 

trips to Mexico,

(on hearing the word "MEXXIIKOH or MEHIKOH" the hibiscus blossoms swooned, they loved the word MEXICO and loved a place like MEHIKOH) 

i play down the elegant fingers,

hair that falls over an eye,

the silk dress accentuating breasts-

and fit the street jargon to my full lips,

try to catch those evasive eyes,

tell you of jive artists

where we heard hot salsa

at a local dive.

And so, i exist...

(on hearing "EXXIIISSST," the hibiscus screamed in delight!)

...Men try to catch my eye. i talk to them

of politics, religion, the ghosts i've seen,

the king of timbales, Mexico and Chicago

(SHHEEKAAGO! Represent!!! yell the hibiscus.)

And they go away. 

But women stay. Women like stories.

They like thin arms around their shoulders,

the smell of perfumed hair,

a flamboyant scarf around the neck

the reassuring voice that confirms their

cynicism about politics, religion and the glorious

history that slaughtered thousands of slaves.

(the hibiscus stood still for this stanza)

Because of the seductive aroma of mole

in my kitchen, and the mysterious preparation

of herbs, women tolerate my cigarette

and cognac breath, unmade bed,

and my inability to keep a budget-

in exchange for a promise,

an exotic trip,

a tango lesson,

an anecdote of the gypsy who stole

me away in Madrid.

( they held their breath)

Oh Daddy, with the Chesterfields

rolled up in a sleeve,

you got a woman for a son.

(And sighed.)

I love that poem too! I use to change "Daddy" to "Tonga" and said something like, "Tonga, with your head high up your ass, you got women for a son." I was specifically thinking about the twenty-something neighbor woman whose mother cut her hair because she stayed out late Friday night. The same daughter, who rushed to prepare food for her brother, a fourteen-year-old boy, who finally came home to his parent's relief on Monday morning. This poem is also my story of growing up as a second sister in a family that disregarded the 3 eldest daughters but was obsessed with loving the only son. 

The apricot colored felila, bougainvillea, across the street, stretched its blossoms to hear these new English poems that deviated from Wordsworth and Revelations. 

In the evenings, I gathered poetry books and went to the Kolomotu'a foreshore to read to the ocean and toa trees. 

On the evening before I left Tonga for the U.S., after almost 4 years,  I went to the foreshore to say goodbye to reef, sea, wind and trees. I began reading one of Konai's poems out loud but a restlessness started around me. I began reading again. Then a cool breeze gently touched me and said, "Loa, it is now time for you to read us poems that you have written in your own voice." The tides around me lapped in agreement and fiddler crabs danced around my feet. 

i am coming into myself more each day as i live here in berkeley. i really am not the same person who lived in mass just last summer. so much has changed and i have grown and changed too. i do talk kindly to the flowers now and i have separated them from myself. they are their own flowers, not mine. i don't have to touch, smell or stare at them anymore. i just let them be flowers and smile at them as I walk by.