TREESILIENCE

by Deb Freedman

While the Lahaina banyan tree has yet to rebound back to its pre-fire splendor, signs of life are very much there, according to landscape contractor Chris Imonti. “We did root samples last week and we had very good news as far as new life in the roots. A lot of new roots shooting off. We tested the moisture and arborist Steve Nims, who is the unofficial leader of the Banyan Tree hui has analyzed all the treatments and he is out today putting sensors on the tree to measure growth rates. With the compost tea we are seeing good results and as long as we give it enough love, I think it’s going to be fine,” Imonti commented. Additional measures have been put into place by the hui (group) who are caring for Lahaina banyan tree and working towards its restoration. The ground and soil around the tree is being regularly aerated, and it is often being treated with a “tree-loving soup,” a mix of nutrients Imonti himself formulated for the recovering banyan. Additionally, volunteers are spreading chopped up alfalfa, a legume—a soil enhancing green manure—around the base of the tree to aid in its recovery. —Hawaii Magazine, September 6, 2023

In Tallahassee,

Hurricane Idalia hurled

a 100-year-old oak tree.

The tree’s fall

fractured

Governor DeSantis’ mansion

in his absence.

Notified of its collapse,

the governor was optimistic.

He told reporters,

if the entire tree needs to be cut,

“…that’s just going to be more room

for my kids to hit baseballs in.”

In Lahaina, Maui,

a 150-year-old banyan tree,

the heart of the town,

devoured by

fast-spreading wildfires

spurred by human error

stands

scorched

living tissue at its core.

Kanaka

in grief,

some homeless,

some looking for lost loves,

nourish the banyan tree

with water

and organic compost

in a town burnt

but not of love nor hope.

Steve Nims, arborist tree tender,

says it is “kind of in a coma…

There are good signs the tree will recover…

It’s up to the tree.”

Deb Freedman is a poet living in Pennsylvania. Her poems have been published in The New Verse News and DVP/US 1’s Worksheets 67. She hopes the oak and banyan trees survive and thrive.

SILENCE AFTER THE MAUI FIRE

by Christian Hanz Lozada

I deconstruct the “Santa’s Village” Lego set
and the house has been quiet all day
 
while Hawaiian Uncle with stage 4 lungs watches the news
and the house has been quiet all day
 
the county asks family of the missing to submit DNA to match ashen remains
and the house has been quiet all day
 
after the fire Hawaiian Uncle escaped by sleeping on the shore
and the house has been quiet all day
 
and by crossing an ocean and by needing his niece’s husband to clean his ass
and the house has been quiet all day
 
long enough for health insurance ones and zeroes to change Hawaii to America
and the house has been quiet all day

Christian Hanz Lozada (he/him) is the son of an immigrant Filipino and a descendent of the Southern Confederacy. He knows the shape of hope and exclusion. He authored the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not (2023) and co-authored Leave with More Than You Came With (2019). His poems have appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review (Pushcart Nominee), Bamboo Ridge Press, 34 Orchard, Mud Season Review, among others. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College.

AQUAMARINE

by Jacqueline Coleman-Fried

Smoke billows as wildfires destroy a large part of the historic town of Lahaina.

Associate with me—

an aquamarine ring gifted to me

on my seventh birthday. Years later,

a family trip to an island few could

name. Water off the island the same

color as my ring. Pelicans dive-bombing 

for fish in the bay. On the path to dinner, 

no electric light—stars flung on black.

Now tout le monde, and hurricanes like nuclear 

bombs, know this island and every 

paradise you ever loved. I want to resize 

my ring and slip it on my finger, but

it will change nothing.

Jacqueline Coleman-Fried is a poet living in Tuckahoe, NY. Her work has appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, pacificREVIEW, Topical Poetry, Quartet Journal, and soon, Consequence and HerWords magazine.

MAUI BANYAN

by Amy Barone

Home to chatty mynah birds, you flank 
the Old Lahaina Courthouse by the ocean
 
on an island of sugar cane hills, Hana sunsets,
historic red wood buildings and Ka’anapali Beach.
 
Stretching nearly two acres with 16 trunks,
cousin to the fig tree, hub for Maui’s
 
huge Halloween party and costume parade,
you star as stage and shelter for natives and tourists.
 
A century and a half old, now survivor of brutal wildfires 
that charred cars and an enchanting town that I first visited
 
as a wide-eyed teen on vacation, marveling at your vastness, 
that paradise exists in an old whaling village in the USA.

Amy Barone’s poetry collection Defying Extinction was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books published her book We Became Summer. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway(Foothills Publishing.) Barone belongs to the Poetry Society of America. She lives in New York City.

THE PERFECT HOME

by Indran Amirthanayagam

while Lahaina, Maui burns August, 2023

May I imagine the scene? Do you

agree? Coffee in the studio, light

streaming in, brushes and easel,

a multi-hued cat? But flames

are rising at five hundred yards.

Oh to leap beyond particulate

matter, to dream, go native 

again, python wrapped  round 

banyan branch, peeping through 

the window while monkey hops 

over the ledge and books, 

to the sugar bowl, scatters 

the grains, attracting flies, 

mosquitoes, the ubiquitous 

roach. Paradise does not look 

sweet. Fireball blows up history, 

belief, certainty, and cars,

drivers burned at the wheel, 

while thousands of miles

away as all birds fly,

by pure chance, living

on the mainland, in another 

corner of  the great expanse

of the once blue ball,

I try in vain to catch 

and douse embers flying 

this month’s perfect storm.

Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.