Song 18
I watch from the Arnold River swing bridge
Two
Black
Swans
Cut
A
V
Through
The
Dark
Waters
Of
Kotuku Whakaoho
This is not the yoga of rivers
But
The
Yoga
Of
My
River
Specific
Historic
Geographic
Personal
It
Is
The yoga of my grandfather
Ernie Reynolds
Whose
Boatshed
Once
Stood
In
This
Very
Place
Of
My
Grandmother
Kate
My father
Jim
My
Mother
Mona
&
Of
Sisters
&
Brother
Of
Aunts, uncles, cousins
Wife, daughter, son
Each crosses these dark waters
It is the yoga
Of
Rimu
&
Kahikatea
Of
Punga
&
Fern
Morepork
Weka
&
Kotuku
Dragonfly
Cockabully
&
Koura
Of
My
First
Brown trout
Caught
Barely a hundred metres from this spot
It
Is
The Yoga
Of
The
Tangata Whenua
The Maori tribes of Aotearoa
Whose
Presences
Still
Grace
This
Shadowed
Shore
&
Of
The great Maori war canoe
Waka Taua
With
War chief & warriors & war chant
Passing
Me
Numinous
In
A
Dream
It is the yoga of my birth
Of my specific life
Of
My
Personhood
My
Call
Of
White
Feathered
Kotuku
My
Angel Holy Spirit
Who
Spreads
His
Wings
Comes to me
Out
Of
Spirits
Shimmering
Depth
Who
Arises
Remains
Is
Ever with me
Who
Sees
Through
These
Very
Eyes
~
All
This
I
Bring
To
Balance
In a vision born out of hearts deep core
As cycle ends
Cycle
Begins
Above
Kotuku Whakaoho
Where
A
Still
Solitary
Kotuku
Spreads
Luminous
Wings
Lifts
Flaps
&
Is
Gone
7/06/12
On Queens Birthday weekend I travelled to the West Coast to spend time on my mountain (Te Kinga) & beside my river (Kotuku Whakaoho… or The Arnold). I stayed in a cabin in Moana: the town of my birth. A huge change process was unfolding within me & I knew I needed to draw close to my roots. In the poem I attempt to draw together, into one unified whole, both my personal life & history & also my transpersonal Self. In the poem the Self is ‘Kotuku’; also ‘my Angel Holy Spirit’. ‘Kotuku’ comes from a dream in which I encountered the Self as an incandescent Kotuku. The phrase ‘Angel Holy Spirit’ is drawn from the writing of Henri Corbin who draws on esoteric (inner) streams within Islamic mysticism. Corbin writes: At the moment a soul finds itself to be a stranger and alone in a world formally familiar, a personal figure appears on its horizon, a figure that announces itself to the soul personally because it symbolises with the soul’s most intimate depths. In other words the soul discovers itself to be the earthly counterpart of another being with which it forms a totality that is duel in character. The two elements of this dualitude may be called the ego and the Self, or the transcendent celestial Self and the earthy Self, or by other names’. 1) In places I chose to write lines of the poem in the present tense; to emphasise its visionary nature: i.e. ‘Each cross these dark waters’ rather than ‘each has crossed these dark waters’ which would have emphasised ‘literal linear time’ rather than ‘visionary time’ or ‘dream time’. Kotuku Whakaoho is the original Maori name for the Arnold River. It is also the Maori name for Lake Brunner. It means ‘flapping of the white heron’s wings’. ‘Koura’ is the fresh water crayfish. ‘Waka Taua’ is a war canoe. It comes from an early dream where I was standing on the banks of the Arnold River when a Maori War Canoe with chanting warriors passed me paddling upstream. The dream left me stunned. The ‘Tangata Whenua’ are the people of the land: the Maori people who were here before the English colonised New Zealand. Maori spiritual presence remains strong along the Arnold River.
1) Henri Corbin, Avicenna, 20-22.