Remembering Kapoho

by Angel Fujimoto-Meagh

Reclaimed by Madame Pele, Hawaii, 2018

South of Hilo, through dark

lush tree tunnels along the red asphalt road

lay quiet Kapoho, land of tidal pools,

where a few bucks would buy a box of mangos,

papayas and bananas, on our way to Kimuras’ place

in my keiki days before the lava.

Along the water’s edge, in a cove protected by lava,

sat two rustic cottages, one green, one blue, screened doors darkened

by trees on either side of the place,

simple one-room cottages, coconut trees, ocean and road,

the smell of sea salt, plumeria, and mangos

in the air, and in the centre, the quiet pools.

Fed by ocean tides, the pools,

one for swimming, one a fishpond made of lava

rock walls where blue and polka-dotted fish, some the colour of mangos

swam, we swam all day until shrivelled, our skin dark

from the sun, eating musubi and teriyaki beef on a stick, no road

noise, just our splashing, squeals and laughter, our happy place.

Once we saw a naked man and woman in this place.

Unworldly, we gaped at them from the pool’s

edge, as if they were Adam and Eve long lost from the road

out of Eden, their old skin wrinkled as pahoehoe lava.

We thought them apparitions emerging from the dark

hedges, though they were only neighbours bringing mangos.

Late in the afternoon under the bright mango

sun we’d float on inner tubes as Dad placed

his net across the channel, where sometimes under us the dark

shadow of a large manta would glide. Later by pools

of light cast by kerosene lamps hissing like hot lava

we fished for mempachi, those wide-eyed squirrelfish in the mangroves by the road,

the darkness cloaking the water, rock wall, and road

as one. Those days are locked in memory like the taste of mangos

on the tongue, gone as the lava

came and covered this place

completely, the red road to nowhere now, the tidal pools

enveloped, the ashes of our collective remembrance covered in dark

basalt. Still, our childhood memories swirl and quicken, red ripe as mangos, under deep pools

not of water, but black lava, that dark fertile place

where new roads may begin.