Watching pigeons slip in and out
of tiny holes in the lava wall,
railroad trestle built during sugarcane days,
now a footpath.

I wonder what keeps them here,
a place of returning, again and again,
like the homing pigeons I raised
as a kid.

What do they find to eat
in this apparently stark landscape?

Still, the red dirt path
defining a lava-encrusted shoreline
is rimmed with clumps of ʻakiʻaki
and clustered weeds with round pods
lifted on tall stems, all seed givers.

In some seasons,
curled pods of dried hale koa
line the trail.

Suddenly all at once,
they rise.

One rock horizon
to the next.

Faithfully returning
to this wall.