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Parting

Parting

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 metre’s 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

Depths

Who

Arises – Remains

Is

Ever with me

Who

Sees

Through

These

Very

Eyes

~

All

This

I

Bring

To

Balance

In a vision out of hearts vast core

As cycle ends

Cycle

Begins

On the swingbridge

Above

Kotuku Whakaoero

Where

A

Still

Solitary

Kotuku

Spreads

Luminous

Wings

&

Is

Gone

 

7/06/12

 

On Queens Birthday weekend 2012, I travelled to the West Coast to spend time on my mountain (Te Kinga) & beside my river Kotuku Whakaoho (or The Arnold River). A huge change process was taking place in me. I knew I had to return to my roots; to Moana where I was born. 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’. It’s ‘my Angel Holy Spirit’. ‘Kotuku’ comes from a dream in which I encounter 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. 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)

I chose to write lines of the poem in the present tense; to emphasise the poems 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 freshwater crayfish. ‘Waka Taua’, is 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.

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