Mourning the Bougainvillea

[Eds. note: This is the third of 14 runner-up posts from the recent Kauai on My Mind Creative Competition.]

by Keahi Felix


They are fallen warriors, now assigned to unknown graves. One day these warriors of beauty and goodness stood at their posts as they had done for years on end. The next they were gone.

They demanded nothing of us, not wages, not shelter, not even food. They were friends of nature and nature took care of them.

Who will remember them now? We know not where they are buried. We, some of us, rather many of us who benefited, recall the blessing of riotous color they gave us, Red, Pink, Yellow, Purple, Orange when, by divine instinct, they answered the prompting of the seasons. Was this the crime they were accused of and for which they died?

Their posts empty; left like scars on an abstract painting whose form still remains intact. Those who wait at the bus stop stare unbelievingly. The tourists who took pictures beneath their arbor like branches will not recognize the spots as the same ones they took home with them in their photo albums from their vacation on Kaua`i.

We, many of us, mourn the absence of the bougainvillea gateway that was meant mostly for those who live on the Garden Island. Now our hearts are taxed beyond repair.

In a parking lot in the center of the government, cultural, and business district lived one generation of our bloodline. We will not be able to grow a substitute of a like spirit of self-giving, unless we ourselves are willing to help nature nurture nature.