Whale-breath blasts up through the moonlight
in a bubble-net of vapor;
trade-winds catch the spout and droplets
stream through palm baleen on Maui.

Past upcountry jacarandas,
spray condenses to a petal
in the lei that the clouds lay
round the mountainsides of Maui.

Over old volcano vent-pipes,
mothered as within an oyster,
mist impearls—a raindrop rolling
down the gardened gowns of Maui.

Flowed and flumed, it shoots a valley,
slows, and steals into the ocean,
scintillating as the sea-shirr
shawls the birthing grounds of Maui.

Underneath that sheen, lunge-feeders,
filled with krill and Arctic pilchards,
sing of their returning journeys
from the Bering Sea to Maui.

Haleakala's great crater
once shot stars; a living mountain
blows the moisture from its blowhole
to the midnight skies of Maui.