Flak Jacket
before going home
in the afternoon
after kindergarten
I would stop
in the gulch
behind our house
and pick white ginger,
so that when
I finally tiptoed
in the door
I would not be
completely defenseless…
Inductees
That morning at the induction center
in San Francisco, we’re freezing,
standing naked,
a throng of draft- age boys,
none of us wanting to be there,
but it was 1968,
John Wayne just out of the box
with the Green Berets,
his Ode to the Viet Nam War,
and the Army medic who
stopped to look at my forearm
with its fresh surgical incisions
heard me say Monteggia’s fracture,
asked about the radial head,
I said:”gone”,
he said:”as are you, sorry son,
we can’t take you with your arm
like that,"
and as I turned to go,
the cornered heifer
now suddenly cut loose,
I knew that every pair of wild eyes
in that dead-silent lineup
was watching me retrieve
my almost abandoned civvies
and wishing they were me.
Outside the fog was lifting
and the summer sun
over the Golden Gate
was its own most brilliant gold..
I was born in Honolulu in 1943. After the War we moved to Hilo with my mother’s family. My grandmother was German-Hawaiian, from an old Hawaiian family of feather workers and cape makers on the Hamakua coast at Hakalau mauka. My grandfather was from northern Germany. We found out after he died that he was half German, half Danish.
My Dad was from Maui, part Hawaiian. I was educated in Hilo public schools and at Punahou School in Honolulu, after which I attended Colorado University, Boulder, and law school at Denver University, from which I graduated in 1968.
My professional career began with a clerkship for District Judge Martin Pence, USDCt, Hawaii, in 1969, after which I had a private law practice until 1982, when I received an appointment from Chief Justice William Richardson as District/Family Court Judge in Hilo.
Two marriages brought three children, Noah Ainahau, Brant Hiikua, and Mele Kaipu’ala.
My photography career began in law school with a Nikon FTN, that had a light meter built in, imagine, a major step forward. That Nikon got lots of use, every available moment. In 2007 three of my standing stone images were included in the Artists of Hawaii show at the Art Academy in Honolulu. In 2015 I self-published my photo book, Iolani, the Hawaiian Hawk, which was named photo book of the year by the Hawaii Book Publishers Association.
After spending all of my photography career in Hawaii, I finally was able to visit Stonehenge last year. The images from that trip are enclosed. Hope you like them as much as I do. Summer sunset light there, and our tour bus was the only one allowed to stay past closing time. Brilliant light. Standing stones. No people. Just me, on the loose at Stonehenge. Imagine! A photographic dream come true.