A hesitant midnight knocking on my front door

Warily I opened it and  for an unbelieving heartskip

I refused to recognise Vela who  wrapped in the biting

winter cold  looked barely alive after being away

for almost ten years and I’d given up on him returning

I’m so sorry  I was too afraid to return!  he cried

He collapsed into my arms with his usual flyingfox

smell and weighing almost nothing as I scooped him up

and settled him into his favourite armchair by the fire

Rushed into the bedroom  got blankets and cocooned him

in their warmth  It’s so terrible out there  he murmured

I’m so glad to be home  son  and he was soon asleep 

Throughout the night I kept the fire alive and watched

the healing flames ease blood back into his face

Whenever he’d needed consolation he’d turned to me

but  for the most killing decade of my life  he’d not been

there and I wasn’t going to forgive him for that

no  never  he’d not honored his alofa for me

The addictive smell of dhal  my favourite food

dropped like a fishing line through my nostrils

hooked me awake and pulled me into the morning kitchen

and Vela dressed in an assortment of Michael’s clothes

that were far too big for him  And how are my grandchildren?

he asked  scooping the steaming dhal into my bowl

I thought you knew everything!  I started my attack

knowing the dhal was his softener  He filled his bowl  sat down

bowed his bald head and prayed:  Tagaloaalagi e, it is good

to be home again with my beloved family …

No  you’re not going to con me again! I shouted

Your beloved family have left And you weren’t here to help me!

Through the blur of tears I saw him lean forward and grip

my trembling hands  I’m sorry  the coward that I am

won and I couldn’t return  he whispered

That’s your excuse for everything  You don’t love me

I’m only the gullible chronicler you need to record your self-love

What bloody use are your useless stories anyway!

Deliberately he dipped his spoon into his soup  paused

and  gazing into my anger  raised it to his mouth and sipped

It’s good  he said  Eat it before it gets cold

My back-swinging hand slapped the spoon from his grip

Damn you!  I cried and scrambled out and into my study

and the inescapable accusing wreckage of my marriage

For three days  without saying anything  he kept

bringing food and leaving it outside my door

I listened to him shuffling through the rooms of the house

that was our family and wondered what he was doing

with the presences and memories he found there

Sometimes I thought I heard him weeping

On the third night  I sneaked out and  finding him snoring

in Michael’s room under the poster of Jordan outleaping

gravity  crept from room to room marvelling at how

he’d cleaned  rearranged and restoried each one

My room with Jenny now had a single bed

and only my photos  momentoes and books

The drawers and cupboards contained only my clothes

He’d changed even the room scent to my favourite —

lemon and coconut with a tinge of frangipani

The children’s rooms he’d restored to what they’d been

ten years before when he’d last seen them

and  on the centre wall of each one  he’d hung a photo of me

Throughout the house he’d removed all evidence of Jenny

I loved him for all that but how do you erase over twenty years

of a life together?  How do you remove it from your eyes

nose  heart and memory?  I returned to my study  and until

dawn  removed all visible evidence of Jenny from it

When Vela woke  I invited him to his favourite breakfast

and while we feasted on crisply fried bacon  eggs

tomatoes  white toast  lemon marmalade and coffee

laughed about how he’d tried to exorcise history and the aitu

from our house and  when I was ready  I confessed

Like you’ve always done with your suffering  I wrote myself

into the pain and came to terms with it

Yes  he murmured  our only gift is to fashion stories out of our

misery  and  in the storying  bring some meaning to it

I still miss her  I whispered into the tears in his eyes

And no storying of what happened will heal that  he consoled

Do you want to hear the story anyway?  I asked

If you want me to  he whispered  if you want me to 

(1) Maungawhau

On the slopes of Maungawhau

the southerly again petals your house

with hieroglyphs of her departure

 

The tamarillo branches tapping the windows

are wings of tava’esina —

messengers of death across a night

teeming with silence

In the afternoons when you walk round Maungawhau

you see her in the shadows that stalk the slopes

for the sad memories of the Ngati Whatua

      The house is full of her echoes

      She hangs in the cupboards

      and from all the racks

      What is the cartography of pain?

This room is a jigsaw of memory and light:

the Hotere Wall of Moruroa sunrises and sunsets

of Black Rainbows and the Fourteen Stations

of Death wearing the feathers of a peacock

of 60,000 years of Aboriginal birth at Mungo

POST-BLACK  Ralph has redrawn the calligraphy

of black and Pouliuli lives again

in all its magic plumage

      The air is seeded with her fingerprints and scent

      In your father’s compound

      whenever the Vaipe flooded

      your future smelled of amniotic promise

      How old is the future?

      How far is it away from Isabella’s

      second birthday  yesterday?

      (On her fourth blowing we had to help her

      snuff out the two candles

      The chocolate birthday cake was too sweet)

Scattered round Tehaa’s firetruck

is his broken kingdom of:

Big Bird and Sesame Street

Leggolimbed creatures jousting for midnight’s honours

the plastic didgeridoo he twirls round and round his head

to give voice to a world without mana

      Your grandson doesn’t yet know winter

      or the swing into spring

      and the other seasons of the blood

      which dictate what we don’t mean our lives to be

      and  as the song says:

      The fatman and his bald charm

      took her to the Hanson St Motel

      on the river of no return

Not long after she left

you dreamt she was standing alone

in a paddock of burnt grass that stretched forever

She was gazing down into the wordless abyss

of her shadow as it stretched out to you

In the Vaipe your arthritic father wakes

each dawn to the Mulivai Cathedral bell

and can barely wade through the rooms of his life

towards God and work

He is shrinking

He shuffles forward defiantly

but one day soon over the phone

the small words will choose you return

to the Vaipe and help bury

a man who weighs what he was at birth

      One morning she too will wake

      to the dawn of the small words

      and the choices that could have been

      and the fatman will look fat and bald

      in the paddock of burnt grass

      which can’t contain her shadow

In the apt connectedness of things

the objects around you exude

the shimmering illumination you saw

in the eyes of the red carp

in the lake of the Golden Pavilion —

an uncanny intelligence delighting

in its wisdom

The carp wore the face of a gnome

      Since she left

      your dreaming has taught you the nature

      of drowning  repeatedly

      You didn’t ask for that or deserve

      the bristling aitu which brim up out

      of the floor and  engulfing you

      in their arms  drag you down

      into the airless pool of your bed

When you were a boy

Mele warned you of that recurring death

storytellers must live out to ensure

their tales’ truths

(Baxter  Tuwhare and others

have spoken of it too)

You’d not known such pain before

All you wanted was to sleep

and never wake again

      Sometimes when your parents quarrelled

      your mother packed you off

      to Vaiala and Patu Togi

      your favourite grandfather

      He said little as you helped him

      prepare his artful fishtraps

      and watched him paddling out to the reef

      believing he’d topple over the edge

      but he always returned

      with a feast of ula  pusi and fe’e

      His was a serene gladness

      moulded by his love of fishing and the sea

      (Asi Tunupopo  his father

      had been a notorious war leader)

      Once  Patu told you he’d one day

      sail the rainbow’s path

      into a horizon as white as bone

      picked clean by the waves

      And he did

A stillness crouches

where the light ends

and the night begins

It won’t take a shape

you can tame

It counts the ticking

of your veins …

(2) Whatuwhiwhi

The air is a conspiracy of whispers

that defines you as castaway

You crusoe the beach

wearing the full text of your grief

as the summer dawn nets stories

in the black waters of Whatuwhiwhi Bay

      Every bay is a generous heart opening

      out to the world

      Every beach a page to be written on

      by the exploring sea

      A genealogy of bays and beaches:

      Vaiala where you introduced your children

      to the sea’s unforgiving gifts and taught them

      how to ride the waves’s crest above the drowning …

      Lefaga Bay is the circling arm protecting

      your grandfather Tuaopepe Tauilo

      and the ancient line of ancestors

      who are buried at Olofa:  mounds of

      eyeblack stones on white sand

      under tangled pua and a sky

      that gazes back at you

      You and your sisters and brothers tidied

      their graves in the holidays

      played kilikiti on the beach

      and swam in the coral-forested water

      that flowed into your future

      while they applauded …

A light breeze walks upright out

of the astonishment of water

and weaves through the mollyhawks

semiquavered on the wet pages of sand

Reina holds your arm

Your shadows merge and pull you

towards Te Ra snared in Maui’s trap

The waka sailed out of the horizon’s heart

and planted their sacred cargo

of atua and hope in this bay

From the harakeke wove the bay’s name

and a rich kete of children

Now no Māori footprints to steer you

to the defiant marae at the sunset tip

of the bay through almost two centuries

of Pākehā erasure that began

when Captain Cook renamed

the bay Doubtless

      Your Taranaki schoolmates took you

      to Ngamotu for your first New Zealand swim

      As you inched into the beerbright water

      the cold killed your toes  feet  legs

      When it started on your balls

      you fled and never swam there again

      Spent later visits with your friends

      exploring the dunes for passionate

      lovers to spy on …

You inherit only your footprints

that follow each other between

Te Ra breaking free from Maui’s trap

and your rescue from her and the fatman

who walk on the water  hang from the sky

and lie across the horizon  taunting you

You want to kill them with obsidian knives

that cut raggedly and slow

and feed their blood to the morning tide

They’ll pay for it one day —

the atua will see to that your Tohunga prophesies

(Crusoe was rescued finally

and took Friday to fight his colonial wars

Later  Friday’s children turned

their guns on Crusoe’s Empire)

You hold onto Reina’s arm and watch

Te Ra is free  at last

The beach  the bay  the marae  the sky

burn with its weaving light

Whatuwhiwhi  the woven mat of life

Wonderful  wonderful  You are now a better songmaker

than I ever was  Vela murmured at the end of my telling

during which he’d wept silently  laughed

and encouraged me with Malie  Malo le saunoa!

Now I must meet your Reina and my mokopuna  he said

I rang Reina that night to come for the weekend