Gestures, the land speaks
A wild cacophony of hues, some are fugitives from other places, violet, magenta, cadmium,
they seem happy here, in the heat, with nativity, states of flow, communion, belonging
the hawks swoop their prey over blustery dunes
swirling, lashing, the air thick with heavy metal, precious metal that man swoops on, 2.5 million years past
the sea continues to encroach, diminishing precious sand
views wrapped, framed, treasured by our gaze, poetic arrangements of idealised beauty, pruned of all fault
they’re nourishment for our soul, both wild and controlled, double-bind
Looking backwards, wilderness was a long process, resilient beyond our imagination
70 million years of isolation
I stand looking, nothing on the horizon, everything on the horizon
light and heat, rising water, precious eco-systems, some still thrive, hau, moana, awa a whenua
Circular time, collective consciousness, which direction are we facing?
Recreation Reserve
Land lost, immanent collapse
the ground where we stood lost to sea and storm
ripping it apart, a story of disappearance.
But weren’t the sounds safely distant?
Facing the Awa
A trade-me find, from a Waikato farming family,
I received this table with details of the origins
of it’s craftmanship, but who knows which
forest it thrived in, before arriving here?
The table supports me every day, as I sit
facing the tupuna awa, the river ancestor,
my elbows and forearms and sometimes
my forehead, rests on this rimu.
The mighty Waikato, the ever present body
that runs through, dividing East from West,
I can’t see her from here, but I can feel her
mauri, feel her evolution from that wet bubble
underground in the far South.
She gathered forces, channelled energy,
and meandered, then gushed then
meandered again into a floating rhythm.
Through virgin rainforest, in days long past,
she made it here, to the Port, Te Puaha Õ
Waikato, to be sucked out into the Moana, the
Tasman Sea, Te Tai-o-Re -hua and into the Pacific,
Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, that liquid continent
known by our ancestors.
They both support us, the awa te moana,
they mix with other ocean currents and swells
to become the ones that support life on earth.
Jana Wood 