Mondays with Aunty Pua

Aloha mai kākou.  Aloha, hi.  Happy new year.  

So many blue sky moments so far in 2025. I am Dawn and I am creating an email series/blog/circle to share stories, poems, principles, quotes and thoughts from my friend and mentor, Aunty Pua Burgess.  She passed last year, and since 2019, groups of us would meet with her to learn and share.  One of the groups kept meeting and meeting on certain Mondays to talk stories about many things, including how she wanted to live, and live on.  While we may not have ever fully answered those questions, we continue our circles, and strive to show up for each other with curiosity and aloha the way Aunty did for us.

Aunty Pua was a prolific storyteller and a great friend.  She was always right there with you in the moment, meeting you in the middle with just the right curious question, commiseration, or a story.  Medicine.  She had poems magically appear on her computer or in her life, and she’d share the right one at the right time.  “I am a poet!” she’d exclaim, and so would we.  She helped us see and articulate our vision.  She was a connector, a translator, a bridge builder, circle holder, a fire starter.  She was very dear.

We all have our own individual relationships with Aunty, and she had the ability to make us feel seen and heard.  Many people have shared with me that she changed their lives just through attending a keynote speech or participating in a brief meeting.  Imagine that kind of legacy!  Through her Building the Beloved Community circles and talk stories, she shared with us her methodology and her way of being, inviting us to ponder and articulate our own.

For most folks reading this, what I’m sharing is nothing new.  However, now that we are in a world without Aunty on the phone, on Zoom, in the car, or under the mango tree, how do we remember, live, and perpetuate the practices she taught us?  How do we find where hope lies?

Recently I was going through my copious notes, quotes, snippets of conversation, “maps of the day”, poems, and emails from my time with Aunty.  I loved talking to her, and when we were on Zoom or the phone, I often wrote down what she said because it was so meaningful.  Then, I had a dream that I should do this and share what I have, and then a pueo flew by, so here we are.

In this email series and on the forthcoming Blue Sky Moment blog, I will share from my personal records and notes.  The blog should be up soon. (Does anyone blog anymore?  I guess I do!  It’s been so many years!)  Please feel free to share back, or join as a guest storyteller.  I am trying this the first few months of the year, and will see where the storytelling takes us.  This is my way of connecting the dots between my experiences with Aunty, the friends I’ve made along the way, and the ways that she is still with me (and us) as we continue building beloved community.  Mahalo.

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This week, as a sort of beginning, I have a poem that I wrote for her big birthday in 2022. It’s a kind of cento, or collated poem, composed from many of Aunty’s principles, her own poems and the poems of others, and some of her favorite sayings or quotes that she would share.  If you have known her the essence of this will be familiar to you. 

Mahalo nui for being a part of this practice of remembrance and a kind of embodiment.  If you want to, read the poem out loud.  The quoted first lines of stanzas 2-6 is the “Prayer of Approach” that Aunty liked to start her circles with sometimes.  If it’s italics, it’s either from her poems or a quote from her.  

Sending you peace and aloha as we approach and are sucked into this new year.  Hope to stay in touch and build community with you all.  

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E pule kākou

Ano‘ai ke aloha e nā hulu manu like ‘ole 

Language is a gift of the gods.

We come from this place called Hawai‘i.

“I honor your gods”

she answers the phone…

“Yes, this is Puanani!”

 (…and chooses her name) 

“I drink at your well”

with this spear

and diaper-wrapped gun

with this pen and these poems

she steps into the circle of firelight 

and tells the whole story:

The deepest layer of pono is hope.

“I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place,”

sun-warmed and star shined, 

the tiny mouse dreams in the corner

and Cousin Bozo drives 35 teens to town, 

all rappin’ and snappin’ and full of ea.  

“I have no cherished outcomes,”

a scoop of earth, the ‘Aina 

a scoop of water from the land and the sea, Life 

a rainbow, Hope 

and Aloha, Love.

“I will not negotiate by withholding and”

…be creative!

A movement is based on the commitment of one person, of each person.

Kākou. Us guys. More than two-legged.

“I am not subject to disappointment.”

circling,

we find our thread, and follow it.

together, we dig the lo‘i deep, 

building beloved community.

Amene

(A pule for Aunty Pua with aloha [in her own words] from Dawn Mahi)

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me ke aloha pumehana,

Dawn