New verse by Northland writer Briar Wood.

Kuramārōtini

So the story goes

that trickster Kupe

cheated his friend

into diving overboard

to free the lines

then paddled rapidly away.

Some hoa.

Best to know that

legendary navigators take huge risks

and do not make the safest companions.

Ākuanei—

she asked herself—

what do I want—

home in Hawaiki

or the travelling years?

What does he want—

the waka my father gifted?

Matahourua and me?

Or maybe unhappiness

with the man she’d married

drove her to the coast.

It’s possible—

she was curious and Hoturapa wasn’t

the kind of man who liked a journey

so she chose Kupe.

Yet even an inveterate traveller

might become weary in a waka

on the open sea,

looking out for landfall.

Travelling direct to her destination—

as the future loomed towards her

she named that radiant land

on the horizon

Aotearoa.

From Rāwāhi (Anahera Press, $25), the debut collection of verse by Briar Wood, due to be published in October.

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