the beginning
Te Kikorangi I said it’s Thursday
and the kids at Belmont are waiting for us
digging into their bags to find kites and strings
opening the yummy lunches they made
with the best stuff in the fridge because
it’s poetry day and poets need all the fuel
they can get when they’re aiming at
A MILLION POEMS FOR MATARIKI
Te Kikorangi I hear they’ve got big plans
kumara vines tangled up with stars
words that will go to the edge of the universe
words that will go running out the door
words that sneak into your heart
like an equalising goal in the last minute of play
rainbow words curling words whisper words
words that want to get under our feet
out in the street up on the web onto a phone
words that will make us proud to start
ANOTHER MIILLION POEMS FOR MATARIKI
it’s nine o’clock on Thursday morning at Belmont
time to hand out posters and chalk
time to see where the kids will take us
with their star-tripping honey-dipping miracle poems
are you ready Te Kikorangi are you ready
to roll with the Belmont kids today?
there were four pavlovas when we got to the hall
a postcard on legs and a buzzy bee come in said the kids
it’s TAONGA WEEK we like blue sticks and poems about us
we’ve made rustling kites that swoop and fly
all the way up to the misty sisters we’ve got their names
like music in our poems we’ve got parties and feasts
we’ve got kiwi chicks in downy jackets pohutukawa
painted on our cheeks an All Black and a cottonball sheep
we’re writing homework excuses that rhyme and reason
wriggle and split because we’d rather be dancing with the stars
singing with the taewa making a splash for Matariki
we’ve got Gabby and Tamarau in charge of the stick
and we’re asking Evie for a bite of her fabulous hat
jaffas jellybeans pineapple lumps milkbottles eskimos
chocolate fish our smart boards are full of flashing
twinkling gleaming sequins on a black dress
Te Kikorangi did you ever see anything so beautiful
a mother and her six daughters stepping over
the dawn horizon and into the world of light
*
the questions
on Friday we go down the hill
and Belmont Intermediate turns up the volume
and the numbers out there on the courts
the paths the ramps the steps everywhere a poem
can wind and curl every colour words shake out
of themselves and the chalk mellifluous Brazilian
Korean and Te Reo the way those kids rock and roll
is the way they make a galaxy of poems
then bring them onstage and out loud a Piha lip
like you wouldn’t believe surfing Matariki
star star star star star star star a river of souls
the clear voices lift and carry across time
circle out to the island and back to the mountain
Takarunga where singers and poets wait
Te Kikorangi has some questions
for Belmont Intermediate things the poems
have put in front of us bigger than today
or tomorrow and deep as thought itself
driving towards the Higgs Boson or dark matter
those questions we’d like to be able to answer
one day but meanwhile sitting here
on the lip of the great ocean of Kiwa can we ask
ourselves here now again forever
who saw the moon last night
lying on its back above the mountain
new moon waiting as the sun goes down
for the stars of winter crossing the horizon
at dawn who will give them their names
these stars so beautiful that everyone calls
sister mother auntie cousin and everyone sees
eyes doves highborn persons daughters
of heaven with the flash of a kingfisher’s wing
and the golden sun in their eyes who will get up
in the dark and go to the mountain walking
the spiral road remembering those who have gone
whose faces fade out like morning stars
but are never lost who will go to the mountain
climb the road and tell us what we need to know?
*
the shortest day
little St Leo’s welcomes us
with a shaking mane of trees and a ringing bell
from the church over the road at the foot of Takarunga
the high place the mountain that looks out
to the islands of the gulf and the sun so far north
that this is the shortest day of the year beat drums
and blow trumpets on the mountain call back the sun
from its long journey bring back the morning light
so the kids at St Leo’s can organise their feast of poems
for Matariki and the millions of eyes and ears
waiting for the new year to wake up and stretch out
its arms to the sun Ngati Whatua’s mountain stands tall
gulls wheeling over its green head Te Kikorangi I say
the kids at St Leo’s are getting their poems ready
they’re reading out notices and taking the roll
one’s in the office answering phones but where are
the teachers? where is the caretaker? why are the kids
in charge today? bright eyes and big grins give us
the answer don’t worry it’s all good we let the teachers
sleep in they all stayed up to watch the football
and when they get to school with their absence notes
we’ll ask if they were cheering for the All Whites last night
or blowing vuvuzelas and dancing in the streets
with the stunned Italian fans it’s the shortest day
and the longest night of the year ring the bell
beat the drums let the festival of light begin
St Catherine’s kids make gold banana moons
and bring them to the word feast on the board
St Patrick’s kids know exactly how far away the sun is
how far to Mars and how many stars make a sky family
over in St John’s they’re talking about sisters
and how someone can walk through a star doorway
look at the smooth blue of Te Kikorangi passing
hand to hand among the kids of St Francis of Assisi
and when azure silver and gold get together
the heavens polish up for St Dominic’s kids
hooray the wind has swept the concrete dry
all the saints come marching out with their fizzing
shining shooting words wrapped around
lemon cherry lilac mango lime indigo frangipani
seven colours for seven stars on the shortest day
Iris Lily Aloi Diana Finn Daniel Jack
the whole schoolyard is jumping with poems
we lift up our heads and hear them clearly
the trumpets of angels the drums of the heart
the bells that ring out to the stars
*
the longest night
when John Donne writes ’Tis the year’s
midnight, and it is the day’s, Lucy’s, who scarce
seven hours herself unmasks you need
the commas and the apostrophes to understand
the daze he’s in as the planet hurtles
towards apohelion and all possessives leave us
out of pocket out of body out of mind
the very darkest night the black night the long night
of the poet’s soul turned inside out no hope
but Lucy whose name means light who lost her eyes
in some terrible manner as saints do but is lucida
bright star and lucid in her seven hours of daylight
now also Lucina at midpoint above us the half moon
that lights our midnight with trumpets and angels
if only John Donne would turn a little from his black fugue
and consider some of the other stories in the sky
when I asked Dave Eggleton about Matariki
he stayed up all night on the mountain Takarunga
measuring the luminosity of the city lights listening
to the song of the container port cranes he knew
what to do I lie on my back against the lip of the crater
to gaze up like an anti-gravity bungee-jumper
at the star-trek of spaceship Earth this midnight
brings visions to the poet in his observatory
he hears the hum of the volcano below him he leaves
his body to fly over star mountains and he sees
eyes like paua lures in the star ocean his long night
as an astral traveller returns him to Takarunga
when the sun comes up orange as ripe persimmons
in winter’s leafless orchard which is also the colour
of the car carrier he calls a horizontal skyscraper
gliding into the harbour as the city begins to wake
when Bradford Haami talks whales and stars
he uses his hands to mark out wide arcs that triangulate
the positions of travellers in space and time this year
he’s the resident writer on Takarunga and he knows
all about watching from the tops of hills for signs
of how the journey is taking its course his hands fly
up and over 180° Puanga in the east at first light
Rehua in the west their child is the white-flowering
Puawananga whose child is Inanga soget out the frypan
and plenty of butter when the long vigil is done
the warm kitchen the steaming mugs of tea these too
are part of the navigation we make through darkness
towards the breaking light of day the stars go out
trailing clematis and running whitebait over the pale vault
where gold is chasing pink and silver to something
as deep as the ocean from the abyss we come
through doorways that remain forever open
*
the walk
John Retimana keeps telling a story
that circles around a harbour of stars and whales
like the stingray around the kaumatua blessing
the new sand in Torpedo Bay last year twice it circled him
in the cold clear water where he stood with his book
as the sun came up the second time it turned
upside down leaving everyone to make the connection
between this morning and the orcas arriving a week later
to hunt stingray in the shallows of the eastern beaches
as Matariki returned to the sky Matariki kainga kore
the homeless ones the wanderers circling the star ocean
with open eyes watching the moon of the first month
throw light across the sea to the mouth of the cave
under Maungauika where old bones were disturbed
and reburied in the black honeycomb of the mountain
the winter moon rises again and people look
for the conversation of land sea and sky that tells us
how the circles will turn this year
wake up Te Kikorangi I say it’s Tuesday
time to go to Vauxhall on the hill above Narrow Neck
the beach called Kiritai skin of the ocean
the shortest way to carry a waka from channel to harbour
along Seabreeze Road to where the ducks are crossing
through Polly’s Park and splash into the mangroves
at Ngataringa paddle past the Navy and Taua Moana
doing star jumps press ups and running around the field
wave to the Kea and the boat called Star Flyte
taking mums and dads to work in the city we’re headed
past the Yacht Club the Sea Scouts and Korotangi
balanced on a ball of bronze Tainui’s big vessel landed here
below Maungauika the second mountain the one
above Torpedo Bay where they’ve just unearthed
moa bones an adze head and pearl fish hooks that show
people have lived a long time on the old shoreline
the bones are cooked and the fire pit is at the bottom
of a hole covered by a white plastic tent
inside the gate of what is becoming the Navy’s new museum
Te Kikorangi the Vauxhall kids have poems
about stars about kites about families and feasts
they’re bringing them here to Kupe’s bay Te Hau Kapua
cloud carried by the wind to say hello
to the ancient past and to look at the time ahead
this is the Matariki walk it goes everywhere we do
it grows bigger each year A MILLION POEMS
spreading across the isthmus sweet sharp scent
of lemon blossom among the leaves and fruit on a tree
in someone’s garden as we walk on the waterfront
watching the full moon rise out of the sea tonight
14 – 26 June 2010
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