Here's a short little poem.
I lived in Hawaii for 11 years.
And nobody really knew what I did there,
but they knew I raced canoes.
And one time I went to the Kapalama post office
to mail off a box.
And the postmistress was looking at me.
And she looked at the name on the box, my name.
And she said, oh, you're the one that makes those cookies.
Yeah.
But water was one of my teachers.
I mean, water is a being.
And being out in the water in the canoes really--
it taught me.
I went there to learn from water, although I didn't really
know it then.
And it was a major teacher.
And you go to water, there's water, the ocean.
But then you always go up to the clouds and you go into the sky.
And I think it was when I was living in Tucson,
because of the water situation, I
started learning a little bit how to talk to the clouds.
And it came because of situations where I'm going up.
You know, when you leave, you fly up out of here sometimes
and it's like this.
Or the winds, I would start talking to the winds too,
and say, OK, we're getting ready to go up.
This happened the other day, leaving Knoxville,
and it was storming.
And they said, everybody sit down.
It's going to be really-- and so, I think, OK.
I told the clouds, I really appreciate you coming.
There's been a drought here, a terrible drought.
There's been fires.
But you guys came through and you really--
you stopped the fires.
And everybody is so happy.
We saw the wild turkeys out here because we
hadn't seen them for a while.
They were so happy to see you.
So I talked with the clouds that way.
And we went up and there was no--
and it's not anything special.
It's that we all like to be acknowledged.
There's a communication that's always going on.
It's always going on.
So this is "Entering the Principality of O'ahu
by Sky Roads."
Because I would come in.
And I always learned things from the clouds, coming in,
and the winds.
"Somebody sang these clouds into being.
Tell me, who is your singer?
Does the song maker inhabit the story of the pig god digging
cliffs with an angry, passionate love,
or sing knowledge beneath this misty cloak, perched
on the shoulders of the island spirit?
I want to know this song maker who
continues to make songs that lift the most humble spirits
to the grass houses of the heavens,
songs that aren't paid for by the money and influence
of rich, fat, corporate gods."