for the stolen water, lands, and lives of Hawaiʻi, and especially those of Lahaina

to divert, to steal, to hoard,
to pollute, to contaminate

to leak fuel   into
to seep forever
chemicals    into

to fill
freshwater springs
with concrete

how you end
the underground    artery end
stream flow end    estuary end
nursery end       drink end
free end      sacred end
muliwai end    sweet end
breath     end

only the water
for forty thousand
kalo       iʻa       manu
limu      moʻo       hua
laʻau       kumu      kānaka

only for forty
thousands and thousands
to thirst
for this

how
effortlessly
you
ecocide
endlessly

na mākou ka wai:
you could         retch
on your toxic
crops            choke
on your war
chemicals          drown
in your concrete

       and we
           would still
                 thirst for
                       more

Editor’s note: Zócalo originally intended to run “Only the Water” by Hawaiʻi Poet Laureate and professor Brandy Nālani McDougall in October, as part of guest curator Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s month of poetry. Because of the recent Maui fires, we have decided to publish it early.

McDougall tells Zocalo that she wrote this poem after researching colonial water diversion and receiving the public notice of contamination of Oʻahu’s water by the U.S. military, but also sees “water theft and diversion (and the resulting dryness of the land) as key to the voracity with which the wildfires ran through Lahaina” as well. A Native Hawaiian whose ʻāina hānau, or birth land, is Kula, Maui, McDougall writes that her poem speaks directly to “plantation disaster capitalism”—corporate efforts to profit from the climate crisis. For more about water and water rights in Lahaina, and how water theft contributed to the devastation of Lahaina with the wildfires, McDougall recommends this article in the Guardian.

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