Island

I land
where I am –
ripcord born, pacific-eyed and wheeling
mad as gannets in smiling gyre, prowling
for the cold line of horizon beyond
its great gullet of blue. I rouse downward
to the terraforming grin of isles bellied
by cloud. There must be some kind of foot
to pledge to, some thigh-bone in the bone-light
of a moon-shocked shoal as it sinks my wings.
Its signals wreak a bright that havoc night
in trash of those grinding revolutions.

I land
where I am –
palace of dew and green provocative
forest, the atrium for kererū –
those fat magistrates of canopy who
make such succulent drunks. Lashed to atoms
and with my toes dignified in the dirt,
I couch into the cool purpose of land.
Metatarsal and marrow strike root like
lilies; the stuff of us scales away to
mica. I’m tui in the kōwhai – but
one trick of light, I’m ghosts in the rhizome.

I land
where I am –
far-flung and floating luminescent, with
all threats gentled in the turn to return,
we creatures of ravenous dilemma
rally sea-stars; animal galaxies
that craft symphonies with sibilants – lights
and tides to drown the idiots of self.
Shells shore over the mantle of shallows.
Threshold eddies in from the harbour – an
incalculable, new monster of cells
glitters to sand and sublimates to sky.

I’ll land
where I am –
where I have always been.

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