He Lio Pūhāʻāʻā

This song is dedicated to a horse we owned named Duke.  He was an appaloosa.  He originally belonged to my God Father Uncle William Andrade and lived most of his life on the slopes of Maunakea in the Puakala area of the mountain. At one point my Uncle William lost the lease to Puakala and was in the process of reducing the number of cattle and horse he had.  We had asked Uncle William for a horse that was calm enough for two young boys.  My sonʻs Kele and Jake.  He gave us Duke.  Duke was incredible with Kele and Jake.  Every so often I would saddle Duke and go for a ride.  I found however that whenever he trotted I bounced a lot in the seat of the saddle.  I was complaining how I was not able to ride smoothly to my sister Fay.  She is very involved in horses.  She suggested I think about riding a canoe in rough seas and apply the same shifting of my hips used in riding the canoe to riding the horse.  So I tried that but realized very quickly that riding a horse is not like riding in a canoe.  I still bounced in the saddle and had to stand in the stirrups to reducing my bouncing. The English translation is not a word for word translation. Many times there are no English word that match the Hawaiian so English phrases are used to try to capture the Hawaiian meaning.