matin

matin

caught
in the rip
you surface
from in sleep
caught in
the long sea
grasses that
twined your
twisted ankle
breaking them
in waking
caught in
the traffic of
nightmare
you waved
aside like
cloth in
waking

peacock chair

peacock chair
         for Nomindari
Номиндарьт зориупсан шүүпэг энэ бол

just to hear
you had such
a picture,
this one,
we had taken
for us that day,
would have been
enough to
know tears
even if uncried
caught at the
bridge of
the nose.

seeing it
i yet
lost it,

hokianga

hokianga
January 2018
In full, the name is ‘Te Hokianganui a Kupe’, in English, ‘The place of Kupe’s Great Return’

My paternal grandmother’s family, the Von Sturmers, lived first eastward along these shores then later moved south. A Weathercat summer snap.

the place
whence
Kupe returned
to his ‘windward’*
home in the
heaving plains
of ocean nor’east,
the place
whither
i return
on the summer
flood of sun
on tide,
the brood of
winter mist,
places here
written into the
genes where