This morning I sat down to read my assignment. The class is literature of the Pacific islands. The assignment is a series of poems and an essay written on the subject of "the maternal." Here in the islands mothers have a special place. My professor calls it the "culture of Nana."

Mothers in the islands do not fit our stereotype for mothers. Mothers here are strong and harsh. The professor says they are mean!

Anyway, I was reading the poems and trying to note the imagery etc. of the pieces when my pen strayed off on its own. What follows is what followed:

Yes! I am Haole.
I was not born of an island mother.
My father was not an island man,
But he did paddle his own canoe.

My white skin and foreign accent,
Mark me as haole,
Just like the rest of them.
But you cannot know,
I paddle my own canoe.

Your land is gone.
Taken by white hands
To be worked by brown hands.
Your religion is gone,
Replaced by a God,
Forced on your fathers.
Your canoes are gone,
Burned by Europeans
On the white sands of home.
Your blood carries a white stain.
Your land is pale and sickly.
White is not purity.
White is guilt.
Your fathers could not paddle their own canoes.

Today I hear your voices.
I am burned by the fire behind your eyes.
The fire kindled by Europeans who lived
before my father was born.

But I am not them.
I paddle my own canoe
There is fire behind my eyes too.
If only you could see it.

Your fire is dampened
by the comfort of modern life.
Your mothers never needed AirCon.
Your fathers never needed motors.
But you do.

My fire is dampened too,
not by comfort but by emotion.
Dampened by tears of apology.
for what my European fathers
did to your island fathers.

But you and I
Are not those people.
We paddle our own canoes.