A new poem by Megan Clayton.

Rūaumoko

A heart not yet born sounds like hooves under water,
or like the summer’s first gasp after surfacing.
It sounds like unexpected, like the start of a new emergency,
like woah, woah, woah, woah, woah.

I never liked it when we called out Rūaumoko,
the unborn child of cosmic parents, how he
turned in his world and we tumbled in ours.
I held tight the baby already born, thought only

of the day at hand. I did not resile. I was afraid.
For a long time, things were funny and not funny.
It was Cup Day and the sonographers were
wearing fascinators. They said, this is one point two

millimetres outside the norm. The little one turns,
a nearby rumbling and the sound of hooves.
Dense above the harbour and the faultline, there are
places named for help and succour, which I learn about

but where I do not go. The ahi tipua that warmed,
the triumphs of a friend out-of-time at Te Poho o Tamatea.
Stragglers and scrabblers are there too: the borstal boy
who climbs beyond the fenceposts, who puts

calm sheep and twilight between him and the
encroaching state; the girl who reaches up into
the deathly bloom of her despair. Here is the
vantage for which we strive and cringe and

meditate; the height at which the ātua turns,
unbothered, at which all that’s for us, does not mattter.
I say, I want to go somewhere I can scream about this.
She says, a walk in the Port Hills is a very good place

for screaming, but I do not go, though
I add to the list a professional woman
tearing her own throat on the crater rim.
I stay on the flat with the born children

who grow tall enough, warm and learning second-hand
the wild iron of their first breaths, the
almost-taken-backness of our days beside
the swamp. The widower walked his wife’s dog

every day and said, Frosty saved me. I
invent a rescue joke called the Meeting Horse,
who comes, when I call, to the office, and on
whom I ride away.

The Friday Poem is edited by Chris Tse. Submissions are currently closed.