a water suite (keep formatting)

ocean/saltwater/waitī/mulli tahnee

where i’m from the sand is cold     at night, the shells empty, grey

cloud scudding like

the irewaru the spirit voices

on the shore

tender salt, gentle rush of foam

no explorer can hold enough breath for where i’m from

fathoms and fathoms deep                

i have heard. i have danced

narrative after narrative

have heard it sung

have done the singing                      

our shadows are nuclear                  

our gods can swim             

‘never turn your back on the ocean.’ i hear this

everytime i have saltwater up my nose, down the back of my throat, making me cough;

everytime i have sand in my togs, or socks; everytime

i place the smallest of cateyes in my pocket and whisper a karakia. i hear my mother.

hear fear, not as tremor but as the roar of a wave                        

never turn your back to things that swallow

sea, midden, archive, men     or the women they hollow

matariki is an internal time, when

the bounty for the year is told by the brightness and sureness of the sky siblings,

when those who have passed in the year gone are swept up by the great waka,

kua whetūrangitia, made stars.

it is cold, time for gatherings by fires and sharing stories, the time

that the sun shacks up with his winter wife – hinetakurua,

hineraumati is the summer one. this is an arrangement the women had. half a year off is genius

and sustainable

now is the time for gawura to remind the sea of the song that made it

is time for us to sing shore to shore

in the summer of my always childhood, the beach is hot sand on fire during the day

we went to collect shellfish with our toes, or check nets

we didn’t go to lie down on towels. Nor cover ourselves in coconut.

i sent messages across the ocean stuffed into coke bottles. i wrote

‘i’m being held captive in a concrete tower in foxton. send help immediately. aotearoa, 1989.’

because i believed in story, i believed someone might get them