Poem 325

This was sparked by a story I was told of a mother who had been unable to mourn the death of her son in a car accident because of life-threatening injuries to her other child … months later with her surviving son physically recovered and life ‘back to normal’ she began to act a bit erratically … one morning a group of kuia without warning came to her house and took her off for the three days of mourning she had not been able to experience at the time of the death … the poem imagines that some of the purpose of that mourning period is to temporarily become one with death and with the land/the earth beneath us that is equal parts death and life …

( pinhole cardboard box refers to pinhole cameras as made in school science but here imagines a house working the same way … )

Three Days In The Underworld

Grief not over
mourning not truly begun
you look out your window
(pinhole cardboard box
your house snaps the day)
and see the old women
coming up your driveway
in their black
                           fronds
in hand wailing

the egg will not be boiled
today your language is tears
a new convulsive tongue
the keen of the country
tightened
                    time passed over
left like any implement
adze or spanner
flaking in the rain

uttered from burial cave
brown bones to walk on the hill's face
the soul brought alive
from landfill rubbish
joins you now at the kitchen table
(light thrusting down roots finally)
warm old hands in the varnish of sun
await

            you rise
            yes joyful
release scratched in your face
eyes lanced with shadow
the pathways down your arms
are opened
                         this is your
heart you stand on
changing blood

hands feel for marl
clay under the nails
like new strips of flesh
welding the fingertips 
                                             shut
now you are home
this fish will carry you
spawning in open sea
up rivers into greywacke
schist and loam

why shake against the land?

swim slowly
off your bones