Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a journey I must take
Alone into my childish fears, and there
Confront my fathers for my children’s sake.

I must go back before I cease to care,
And the world darkens and I cannot move.
Forgiveness is a journey from despair

Along a path my ancestors approve.
I must go back and with them make my peace:
Forgiveness is a journey into love.

-- Alistair Te Ariki Campbell

Tangaroa Nui

Last night I dreamed again of tides,
not those tides rocking soundlessly
in caves that shuffle old men off
in their extremity, but those inner
tides that have their source in dreams
where my father, astride the passage,
reins them in with outstretched hands …
I saw again the tides plunging
in harness, sea and sky boiling
together, and myself a child flipped
high into the air by a dolphin,
to float down softly as a feather
past my father’s smiling eyes, past
the wheeling seabirds, to settle
on the sand and fall fast asleep
with the tide beating in my ears
as surely as the heart of him
who checks the pulse and flow of things
and holds time in his hands.


-- Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1925-2009), New Zealand poet of Cook Islands and Pakeha ancestry

Tangaroa is the god of the sea.

Image: surf at Napier, Hawke Bay

Absence

I never eat sensibly when you’re away.
I make do with odd scraps of food
that don’t need heating up,
or nibble on a biscuit or two.
Under the pine trees
the dogs wait through wind and rain
for your return.

I fiddle with a poem,
searching for a true rhyme,
but settle for less.
If it gets any colder I may light a fire,
or I may not.
I take up a book of poems,
but after a few pages I put it down.

Far away the sea climbs the road
that you have taken,
and lazily climbs down,
leaving a white smear.
Under its plume of cloud,
Kapiti drifts towards Australia.
It will be another long day
before you return.

-- Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1925-2009), New Zealand poet and playwright of Cook Islands and Pakeha ancestry.