an intro to harakeke weaving

the second edition of ‘HKWV101’

for beatrice

My mother, hair afire and gold rings tarnished from castille soap, does not speak her reo.

She cradles pounamu close in her ear lobes but does not know any kupu Māori apart from kia ora and that’s about it.

Her eyes are kind but when she speaks

I recognise the edges of my tongue.

I am the only child who knows a karakia kai, and I cycle through the words in my head,

rolling the words around my tongue like Tangaroa smoothing limestone white and gold in te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa.

Every so often I’ll catch my lip on a consonant, and I’ll feel the Māoritanga bleed whero out of me,

whakamā like cold sheet rain.

The act of reclamation looks like small revelations in 31B notebooks for cheap,

littered pens black and blue and malaise

that scribe and sink

their bloody kowhaiwhai foam-teeth,

I keep my sternum bare of ink.

My tīpuna have Pākehā names.

Beatrice’s story is that she was born and died in Waipawa.

She seduced a European sailor,

crying siren-songs as she birthed sixteen children.

Cheryl’s story is that she carries a box that contains a heavy lump of pounamu and it sits on the glass coffee table,

the latch closed.

She crochets quilts for us that reek of rosehip hand wash.

Survives three or four heart attacks and still carries cigarette ash around her collar.

And she helps you pick out the strawberry fruit bursts from the lolly jar.

Cheryl tells me about Beatrice and her siren-song sixteen half-steps down

From a hospital bed approximately two-hundred and sixty-two kilometres from the Waipawa river,

two-hundred and eighty-two if you want to see the Wairarapas as you drive

my eyes reflect the dark magic in her dark hips that lured

dark-hearted men into dark-lipped waves,

And the chest cavity where the belonging is supposed to go slowly fills with river-water.