I watch the full moonʻs light slide like silver water through the silhouettes of trees
that cast long shadows over mounds and rocks, a hidden stream, and the expanse of lawn.
I think back to when I played hide-and-seek games with cousins at the shoreline,
Pūpūkea near Sharkʻs Cove on Oʻahu, dodging in and out of the shadows of ironwood trees.

We hid amidst the vapors of murk mixed with sea spray and wild laughter, sought one another in 
sands under the glassy moonlight that splashed our bodies like surf.
We stood as though rooted, silent while sighs from the sea carried through cool, night air.

I was four or I was five and I was not Leanne or Neal or Kerry, but myself,
counting my own breath, one with the dark, gazing at the silver gleam of heavenʻs road
making its path from below the moon across heaving, purple waters to where I stood
as I do tonight, sixty years from that first shining.  I told it to my daughter,
who hid in moonshade, isolate and lonely, missing the welter of what life had been,
her father five as a child unfathomable, her slim form disappearing, while I stood, seeking.