[after Ciarán Fox]
North/Te Raki
One-way ticket outa here, rivers entwine
a dance of divergence/reunion, a coming
together and letting go, channels dug from shingle
and flow, freedom in a handbasket, failed
subdivision and villages abandoned where
massacres turned to ancient vendettas sung by
our tīps, archaeologists with hand tools and brushes
sifting through the rubble of their lives
can they smell the blood of the soil?
East/Te Rāwhiti
Sunrise whaled beach and stenching poo ponds
where food was collected from swampy
ground and estuary, kūaka who brave their
7000-mile journey on tiny wings, to get back to our
cloud-clad summer amid the yaps of marauding terriers,
my stern grandmother with set hair and Dame Edna
glasses lived here with Aunty Jill in a house not used
to children, we’d sip cups of Earl Gray and
nibble biscuits sandwiched with dried sultanas
like flies squashed in a trap.
South/Te Toka
My heart pumps in a peninsula-shaped bell jar, like the
withering rose in Beauty and the Beast, steep denuded hills
with crusted jewels in basalt that charm with shadowy secrets
at dusk, a steep path trodden by pilgrims seeking
a better life than what Home could offer despite it
being the land of their ancestors, they made our places
more like theirs sucking the life out of the repo,
forcing trees to their knees stripped naked
the harbour although dying still holds my pulse
the urupā at Rāpaki, still holds my bones
the shape of it an open throat, chanting.
West/Te Uru
green, that is all, just green
trees and pounamu and lush paddocks
weighed down by cows punctuating them
in monochrome hooves mine shaft
and men underground in a dusty
purgatory not of their making
a tough wild beauty
Te Tai Poutini where a taniwha
turned his precious into our
much coveted
stone
kōwhai
blossoms
drip
like paint
from
swirling
canvas
like blobs
of blood
from
severed ear
this green
and golden
scene a
Vincent
painting
smears of
light cradling
this tiny
survivor
a foetus in
the suburban
womb
barely
attached
by a thin
rivulet of
umbilical
to patches
of papa
in the
east
Photo credit: Ebony Lamb