Still Life, in Koa · Bowl I

Why this one exists

Haumea's sulfuric breath coaxes a bud from the loam. A sapling sentinel to stand this Pacific outpost. Deep through crystalline Andisol, tendrils scratch and seek, to join a community of entanglements.

One hundred and twenty years, and sixty feet, ring by glowing ring, embodied. Keeping watch from Krakatoa to Hiroshima and on. From kingdom, to territory, to state.

What's the difference, bayonet or axe? It's the hands that wield, that kill. This island grows by fire, and dies by water. Shallow-rooted trees detest a breeze.

The elders whisper of a twin-hulled canoe run aground by insatiable appetite, brothers and sisters cut down in their prime to make room. And more canoes.

Absorbing this insult and that injury, weathering this fire and that storm. Witnessing neighbours ripped up by the roots. Dismembered, eviscerated, gone.

Still, you conjure yourself out of thin air. Another ring, no matter the year. From the outside, nobility and art. Inside, a slowly burnishing heart.

Flying straight out of the morning sun, so close you could almost touch them, ripping leaves off in the prop-wash, ripping holes in the ocean with fire.

You must always strive to reach the sun, and when you have it in your grasp, remember; Night will fall regardless. And Eagles will perch wherever they please.

One hundred and twenty years ended in an afternoon, with the smell of gasoline, to whet the appetite. Fed to the mill, with steel jaws and teeth, measuring life by the perfect board foot.

Thirty years you laid in state, waiting for the maker's hands to hold you up to the light again. But even the maker is unmade, in time.

From his hands then, with hope, to mine.

A teardrop caught in a curling leaf? A frozen ocean glittering? A lava flow, petrified, but still aglow? The heartwood remembers in chatoyancy.

With reverence and optimism this morning, I carved two large Koa bowls with brass inlay. One for my son. One for my daughter. For our children to remember us by.

It stood here

This tree grew on O'ahu for one hundred and twenty years. It was standing on the morning of December 7, 1941. It was felled, milled, and waited thirty years in another maker's shop. When he passed, the wood came to Winnipeg.

Every side of it