A Father’s Day tribute to Hawaii dads

Today is Father's Day – so here's a poem for our dads

Darron Cambra

Slam poet Darron Cambra wrote the following poem for his father on Father’s Day, June 20, 2010. Cambra is also the Arts and Education Director for Youth Speaks Hawaii and a substitute teacher.

Plantation Generations

My grandfather went to war and back
to get off Pepeekeo Plantation.
A bullet shattered his cheek and tore out his back,
crawled to base until cuticles cracked.

Sent to military hospital to recover
in Germany, befriended an enemy who became
a bed side neighbor
and life long correspondence
just the kind of man he was.
But not a response from home;
his lover kept unopened letters stashed away.
She didn’t want him to leave,
so, instead of grieve, she leaves the
letters sealed in a corner, like her heart,
tucked in chest.

Edmund Cambra loved to learn
but on Pepeekeo Plantations
goals don’t stretch past the next harvest,
dreams are the hardest
because Icarus views of plantation stores and fields
causes the wax to wane,
before morning light
sneaks through windowpanes
mourning the morning again.

Edmund was offered an education
in town, off the plantation.
But his father rejected the gesture;
couldn’t let one of his sons run off and learn,
fields needed to be turned,
teenage muscles burned,
and sugarcane learns to fight back with
every machete hack
slashing across where paper cuts could be.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked
recruiters came to camp
and Edmund was one of the few
who could sign more than just an ‘X’.

On a German pasture
just like any other
my grandfather learned
that scouts and snipers don’t mix
and he was left for dead.
Only him and God knew different.
There is no confessional
quite like a quiet foxhole.

Scenic fields feel different crawling on your belly
afraid of yelling in pain or for help.
My grandpa’s hardest footsteps are
marked with bloody palm prints
and shards of fingernails impaled
in every next step dug in the soul
but there was a woman at home…
and sometimes that’s enough.

Purple-heart in tow he headed home
and made my father and gave him two brothers.
See, my father was born plantation poor.
Where you needed to hustle for newspapers if
you wanted to teach yourself to read.
Where your daily chores caused you to bleed.
Where you would have everything you could want
and not enough of what you need.
This is where my family tree sprouted its seeds.

My grandfather killed grandfathers to see farther
that the plantation and
I’m sure in his nightly conversations
with God he promised
to never put his future generations
in similar situations;
determined to provide his offspring opportunity
through education.

There’s a grotto giving thanks to the Virgin Mary
at St. Joseph in Hilo.
My grandfather landscaped their campus
so they would take his seeds;
studied the school books alongside his sons,
used his boys’ lessons to pass engineering tests .

My family has a history of following hearts
rather than wallets.
My grandma left comfort of upper-class
to be the wife of a field worker.
But she saw a fire in his eyes;
a desire to build aspirations that would span generations
as all three of their sons graduated past plantations.

Ronald went further than island dreams.
A local boy pursuing goals over an ocean
hoping to open doors locked to his father.
Being the first ‘Cambra’ etched on a UH Hilo diploma
was not enough.
Grandpa said “What’s next?”
and in search of a higher rank,
deployed to UH Manoa;
and after the flashes, decorative sashes
Edmund stashes that degree to be hung
and displayed and said
“What’s Next?”
In Washington he became a doctor
of education and communication,
found his other half,
came back home to make a family.

Kicking and screaming I’m following
my parents’ footsteps
but in my own path.
Part SPED, part Higher Education.
Part classroom, part administration
With no union for Poet Substitutes,
so I fly without a net.
Earn student respect;
part because of what I am teaching,
part for making it poetic;
entirely because I give it back.
And now I am proud of what I do;
help teens through hard times
Through raw rhymes in free-writes.

If you were to tell the teenager in me that I would
grow to be a teacher, the class clown in me
would’ve thrown something at you.
The jock in me would’ve given you a wedgie
and the poet in me would’ve said nothing.
Because at 17 I did not see a future in my feelings,
didn’t believe that education could provide like a jump shot.
In basketball you only need one bad fall to end it all;
I also learned why the Achilles is a suiting name;
it’s never the same.
But in poetry, wrong falls make for more poetry,
so I’ve got a litany of potential literature.

But I’ve really learned:
Doing what you love is more important
than doing what you’re told;
but if you are going to break molds and rules,
you need the tools to build a brighter tomorrow.
So I
use poetry to reach a generation
with a failed education
but a passion to learn.
And when it’s their turn,
take the bridges we’ve burned and
build from the ashes,
wish on eyelashes.
Equality becomes our equation
when we leave no child behind, stuck on plantations.

-“Plantation Generations”

By Darron Edmund Cambra
For Ronald Edmund Cambra
In Memory of Edmund Cambra

June 20, 2010
Happy Father’s Day!