In Hawaii, an End of Innocence

A 6.9 earthquake that struck Hawaii’s Big Island on May 4 was just the beginning of an ordeal that still continues for the people of Puna, a semirural district on the eastern slopes of the island’s Kilauea volcano.

The previous day, the ground split open in the verdant community of Leilani Estates and a series of fissures began spewing fountains of magma and emitting poisonous gases. Leilani’s 1,800 residents were evacuated. More than 700 homes and farms were lost in subsequent weeks as a lava river flowed to the Pacific Ocean and consumed more residential areas.

A volcanic cone has grown to almost 200 feet tall in the middle of the Leilani community as the vigorous eruption continues for the 11th week. Earthquakes triggered by volcanic explosions rock the summit of Kilauea daily, damaging roads and buildings in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and forcing its indefinite closure. The southeast coastline of the Big Island is forever altered as lava meets the ocean along a two-mile front.

Thousands of people remain displaced. Hundreds are still in evacuation shelters, others are staying with friends or relatives or have moved to neighboring Hawaiian islands or the mainland.

Another blow to Hawaiians came July 11, when a Puna charter school, three more homes in Leilani and a popular beach park were inundated.

Sara Simone Wagner’s Leilani home still stands, but she remains evacuated, staying with friends in Hilo, the Big Island’s largest city. She has touched the hearts of many traumatized Hawaiians with a poem she published on the neighborhood social network. The poem speaks to her love of the land, the sometimes terrifying power of nature and, as she puts it, “the end of our innocence.”  Truthdig is pleased to reprint it here.

Sweet Leilani

By Sara Simone Wagner

May, a month of promise and beauty

gentle showers

fruiting trees

budding flowers

calming seas

Rolling shakes wake Puna’s slumber

draining caldera

exploding methane

mounting hysteria

we’re never the same

Fissures appear stage left—and stage right

performance fire

once-verdant plains

landscapes mired

sulphuric stains

Subtle cracks, soon gaping chasms

shifting rift zones

explosive night

mounting cinder cones

nature’s might

Alexander palms against a red night sky

terrain shifting

burning Makamae

pahoehoe drifting

scorching Kahukai

Bolders fly through pressured cracks

tephra covered pain

breaks on Alapai

toxic poison rain

missing pets on Pomaikai

Cruel slow burn and acrid air

seizes homes and structures

collateral damage

civil defense lectures

interrupted lives to manage

Kilauea unrelents with ashy plumes

fingers of lava

hot unwanted embrace

like too-hot java

burns at the taste

Moku gashed open like a battle scar

lava hits sizzling ocean

new land will avow

painful emotions

deep as Halemaumau

Evening curfews with midnight looters

gas masks tightened

tears escalations

anxiety heightened

forced evacuations

Hissing bay with dangerous laze

lava articulates

homes burn slow

caldera again deflates

We mourn Kapoho

Power outages and scorching air

crimson glows at night

our reminder you see

of Pele’s might

in our sweet, sweet Leilani

(Makamae, Kahukai, Alapai, Pomaikai and Moku are the names of streets in Leilani Estates. Pahoehoe is a lava formation that looks like rope strands. Tephra is the name for rock fragments and particles ejected in an eruption. Halemaumau is the collapsing crater at the Kilauea summit. Laze is toxic haze formed when lava enters the ocean. Kapoho is another community that was lost to the current flow. Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of fire, respected as creator and destroyer of the island chain.)