Kona Coffee
Carol Aronoff, Ph.D.

I drive to the smell of roasting coffee,
chickens crossing the road,
mangoes overhanging cinder driveways.
Bananas on long stems with blooms
the color of Merlot
vie with hanging heliconia
as lush reminders of eros in nature.

In Kona-country
where bumpers read live aloha,
food falls off trees,
coconut fronds form gentle rooftops
yet Hawaiians go hungry,
homeless in their own land.

Developers offer parks
adjoining thousand-acre haole havens,
but there are no places for Hawaiian children
to play as their grandmothers once did
along family lines,
mauka to makai.

Native rights,
obscured by multicultural banners
no longer have a place at the table
while the city council votes
to bring aloha into government
by wearing flowered shirts to work.

But everyone loves Kona coffee,
now picked by Mexicans
and priced too high
for Hawaiians to drink.
Coffee farmers share good old times
before hula dancers
adorned tee shirts and trays.

The tourists keep coming;
fed on blackened ahi
served by natives on minimum wage,
they train for triathalons
like bees on bicycles.

Under curling Kona sunsets
of azure and gold,
worn stickers flutter at half mast
off fence posts.
With a flower in their frayed corners,
they urge us to malama the aina
Yet here, Hawaiian homelands
are reserved mostly for the dead.

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