Ephemeral
Ranginui stretches out
Yearning to reach his love.
Papatūānuku sighs,
her gaze caught above.
Wāhine and tāne spread
Like oil
Across Papatūānuku.
Daughters and sons
bound together
caress the Earth Mother.
Awa bleed into moana
Waka pierce through,
Fingers in cool water
never far from Papatūānuku.
Earth Mother pulls at all her children
To feel her breath
Across their skin.
Countless tipu break
Through the skin of Papatūānuku.
One heart beating
beneath the soil;
Uniting all tangata
through their roots.
Tiny footsteps patter on her back
They play on her grass.
Papatūānuku feels all.
Dancers twirling beneath the marama
Highways sizzling,
with their first cars.
Papatūānuku sighs,
As she sees them traverse her borders
To lands, they do not know.
And so it continues
One by one, the children go.
They dig at tender flesh
Streams fill up with trash
Papatūānuku ebbing away
Each day.
Drilling for hinu
Searching for her heart
Eating away at their home
until she is nothing but air.
Papatūānuku waits
Through the tears of Ranginui
And the autumn breeze;
For when her children will remember
Their home again.