at long last the bird...

...of dusk emerged, swooped, descended, alit.
gray-white pu'eo of upcountry Maui, so pure
a messenger of flight and wing, of light and rue
that we stopped bumping the ball between us

as he called attention to its marvelous appearance.
rare, but not so rare as to be miraculous. yet still
infrequent enough to cause a gasp in the fabric of
time and the sweep and lunge of our play. he lent

his eyeglasses to me so i could see it better, sharper
in the dying day when the ohia forest's green turned
spattered-gold with the sun's western expiry, bartering
daylight with starlight in a gentle, unremarked exchange.

we took the time to stand and exclaim, wondering where
it was going, which prey it would find to chase, catch, eat,
what loneliness it might shuck off with its nightly aerial dance.
at long last, the vision of his airy aumakua to delight in,

a revel of longing and rapture, simply because it lives here,
where we do, in a space shared like the sanctum it is for love,
living, and the other things that constitute the thread and story
of days filled with expectation, surprise and metempsychosis.

1
In ancient Greek philosophy, metempsychosis is “the supposed transmigration at death of the soul of a human being or animal into a new body of the same or a different species.” (OS X Dictionary def.)

2
In ancient Hawaiian mythology, “Aumakua refers to a family or personal god, often a deified ancestor. The aumakua frequently manifested as an animal, such as a shark or an owl.” (fr. Wikipedia)

3
Early yesterday evening, as Pono and I were playing volleyball out on the sloping driveway, a pu'eo appeared above us, causing us to stop and just watch it, as it circled and swooped, setting out for its nocturnal hunt for food.