Tuesday, October 10, 2017

October 10: Dairy Queen, Joy Harjo, "It's Raining in Honolulu"

It has been a long day of work and student conferences again.  I want a vacation.

England or Greece or Italy sound nice.  I'd even settle for something a little closer--Big Sur or Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon.  Heck, I'd even take a trip to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard at the moment. 

On days/weeks like this, I really think back to the time my wife and I spent in Hawaii on our honeymoon.  I remember hiking over a mile of black igneous in Volcano National Park.  It was night, and the stars were like milky clouds of gnats in the sky.  When we reached the edge of a cliff, we looked out across a bay.  Lava was pouring into the Pacific, an orange tongue licking the salt.  And the sound of it hitting the water was deafening.  A Jurassic roar.

Saint Marty needs to go back to Hawaii.

It's Raining in Honolulu

by:  Joy Harjo

There is a small mist at the brow of the mountain,

each leaf of flower, of taro, tree and bush shivers with ecstasy.

And the rain songs of all the flowering ones who have called for the rain

can be found there, flourishing beneath the currents of singing.

Rain opens us, like flowers, or earth that has been thirsty for more than a season.

We stop all of our talking, quit thinking, or blowing sax to drink the mystery.

We listen to the breathing beneath our breathing.

This is how the rain became rain, how we became human.

The wetness saturates everything, including the perpetrators of the second
     overthrow.

We will plant songs where there were curses.


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