For MDS

I te wā i tīmata ai te ora
Ki ōku whakaaro nei, kua kite angeau i a koe
me ngā momo āhua o to āhua
ahakoa kihai angeau i mahara i te pono koe
engari i mahara angeau kei waho ki a koe
e kanapa ana puta noa i te wai
me te ātaahua o tēnēi mounga
ka rite tonu ki te kapua iti
huri noa i Te Papakura o Taranaki
ka rite tonu ki te kōhuru o te ua
ki runga o Eltham i roto
i te tomo makariri o te takurua

From Kāpuni Falls*

When life was beginning
I now think saw you
or the spectral possibilities of your form
though I did not perceive you as a reality
rather I sensed you were out there
glimmering across the water
as magnificent as this mounga
as common as the low cloud
circling around Te Papakura o Taranaki
as dismal as the murder of rain
over Eltham in the cold abyss of winter.

*Formerly known as Dawson Falls before the 2023 Mounga Taranaki Treaty Settlement.

Strumming the air, frail heart suspended
union with a roadside clematis dangling
beside the chasms of ancient rivers
hovering like an angel incarnate
deliverer of umpteen flowering joys,
tiny parcels of pollen plucked into
sacs of gold, small offerings to fertile gods.

Inspired by Jeffery Paparoa Colman’s unpublished poem Pollen, 12/12/23.

I want to measure plumb lines
& to chart new continents;
the contours and curvatures of skin
Draw new pleasures onto pliant canvasses;
to dream a little more
To put every fluid ounce of me into the ink which colours the topography of you
Stencilled in pale pinks, mauve, sizzling reds & penitent purples
To have at the command of my fingertips—an empire:
Your bluffs; crevasses, major highways, and roads that lead me onward, imploring;
I want to find flash-flooded rivers that make your tremulous heart race
Find dank doorways in your industrial estates,
luxuriate in long, languid rambles
across the Nape of your neck
To press my face into windowless shops
and to inhale the fragrance that lingers
& to come and know, the splendours of cartography.

It was remarkable
the way he put her insecurities to sleep
with all the skill of an old time somnambulist
the way he dived into her opalescent eyes
and starved all her gnawing fears
& tasted all her incalescent dreams
that she had stockpiled in bone marrow
& when you have swum in her oceans
a lake will no longer suffice
everyone else is a pond but you are always the ocean
find a hand in the darkness of a flood
& if there is insufficient light
I propose you & I enter the water.

I will wade out
till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
—Crepuscule, e.e. cummings

She declares, determinedly
she won’t be seduced by the hype
remembering that time we
went out late
the evening languid in the cold autumn air
in search of a blood orange moon
up on Churchill Heights
and what a disappointment that was
without binoculars and strawberries
simply an orange smudge
this one
a waxing crescent phase
the penumbral eclipse
embracing the moon-rise lunar eclipsing
beaming silver luminous orb
lust with closed eyes
dashed against inks of darkness
the sleeping curves of your body
a lunar mystery of the flesh
gorgeous salute to the firmed thighs
lubricious draperies of snatched lunar minutes
all over Whaler’s Gate
that beaming cyclops rising ever higher
I signed my name, Trevor M Landers
in a dissolving sky.

For Nika

Sometimes my husband
holds my lower stomach
in his manly hands
when he sleeps
his whole arms around me
heaving and kneading
and I confess at that moment
plump with our child
none could be happier
that sacred seed
growing inside me.

The unmistakable whiff
of state-sponsored asepsis
and a corridor of laboured,
breathy inhalations wheezed
the desaturations of privilege
a sojourn: short-stay surgical
M18 at Waikato Hospital
Short words in each pause,
and I am only listening with
half of my heart, the words
breathed in forming my ribs
bend my spine, let fingers
intertwine, the oxygen spills
from skin to skin and even
my hands are having trouble
breathing you in; giddy with
desire for oxygen and you.
My love is a hospital; a fair
asylum for asthmatic lovers
& dreamers of every hue, a
great leviathan around you,
a skilful uncouth prison of an
embrace coming out at me
without necessity or
habitual
ennui.

ethereal
astonishing beauty
evoked through rapturous lensing,
swooping and gliding down rushing over stones
descending into your depths
alongside schools of startled fish,
I wish I was a frigate bird
witnessing from above the uncanny patterns
the waterways carve through the landscape.
a reaffirmation of the beauty of you, river,
and an urgent call to protect you
mainly, from all human-kind.

It is the Fuji-like symmetry
that sends the inexperienced to their deaths
a climb to the summit
seemingly deceptively easy.
On the day I set out on that climb,
no grief saddled our backs
no stones lodged in our shoes
no ominous clouds on the lower slopes of the mountain,
on the day we set out
leaving nothing behind,
nothing on the bed,
no version of myself,
no dream of a summit climb
turning two-thirds the way up
for a doctor’s appointment in Manaia
with Hugh Dugdale
as the other two
made a successful ascent
I remember
the mountain is high in front of me,
as I look back
I have no voice to quantify the height
my knees feel the strain of gravity
the snow is a clerical collar
I am a study of confessions.

This poem has venom in the ink.
On the 28th of February, oafish Russians invaded
the old motherland of the Kyivan Rus
with missile bombardments and a tyrant’s impudence.
I thought first
of Serhiy Zhadan, asleep at home in Kharkiv
a blood-smattered copy of Mesopotamia in the rubble.
Memoir, travelogue, timely or untimely meditation
—or a mixture of all four,
the struggle of this generation
for democracy, and in our own epoch, for life itself.
                        Or the elfin face of Oksana Zabuzhko
                        weathered by daily heart-break
                        without tanks, a treasured copy of
                        Field Work in Ukrainian Sex, is just a novel,
                        but it will defend you and Kyiv, long I pray
                        as we watch the daily atrocities
                        with growing fury and impotent rage
                        as patriots stand before the altars of death
                        like the insurgent Ukrainian armies
                        written out of Soviet historiography,
                        just as in The Museum of Abandoned Secrets.
                        This time we see you and stand with you!
Myroslav Laiuk knows a wonderful word: vozdukh.*
The Russians want to take it away from him
because—they say—it was theirs so long ago
that it’s already foreign:
            He says: we’re inhaling words and parts of words
            “voz”… “voz”… “voz” …
            it transforms into letters.

The air is redolent with courage and unspeakable deaths.
                        Halyna Kruk, sits her office at the University of Lviv
                                    a sea of humanity flowing like an undammed torrent to Poland
                         in the age of helicopter-gunships strafing civilian trains
                         your 2005 Oblychchia poza svitlynoju/The Face beyond the Photograph
                         just haunts me now, your iridescent eyes glisten from the dust jacket.
             Please don’t let them kill you, the whole of Taranaki should be
             demanding
             Please rush to safety, Ukraine will need storytellers
                                                and I admire your eyes as much as your lines,
                                                                                    dorohyy.**

Notes:
* Hard to translate as the word has gone out of usage in Ukrainian, but “the joy of air” is a reasonable approximation.
** A term of endearment like ‘dear’ or ‘cherished one’.