Hinepunui-o-Toka
Hinepunui-o-Toka
We are told that the gods do not breathe,
But that they make breath for us.
Not for us southern women the hā of Tawhiri-matea
for our air is ancient.
Older than the spherical world,
Older than the night,
Older than touch unfurling.
Our air conjured at the hands of Hinepunui-o-toka,
her tawhiriwhiri fanning us
away from the earth’s rim.
E Hine, you are one of our great southern women.
You and your daughters as the winds from all directions;
the wild, the warm, the echoing wind,
the wind that pulls birds into the sky.
Our plain resting at the bottom of ten heavens.
Gods scattered through; ancient children pressing borders.
My Southern Mother, you live with us here;
in this plain of dampness, heat, growth, and breathing.
Pushing debris from the ground,
kissing ice down the valleys,
composing paths for birds
all the way to the lip of the first heaven
where they transform into ururangi;
the wind that dances with the lowest heaven
skimming the bottom like a wooden spoon.
Oh My Southern Mother,
you and your man have birthed mythologies since before time was written.
You paint the world with your air,
your husband changes himself to fit the land
Mahuika as fire,
Muri-raka-whenua as the water that kills it,
He spills upon himself, rises steaming to kiss you.
Five daughters form as compass points,
split your breath between them.
They hold their own tawhiriwhiri,
fanning gentle winds,
pushing strong winds,
lifting birds to the sky,
they train their voices to echo again
and again.
Your eldest forms a child of her own,
so restless, he will not settle inside her.
His arms inside her flap as feeble wings,
feathers caked in blood.
Tenderly she wraps his stillness, casts him to the sea.
The boy is nurtured by the ocean’s swell.
You and your daughters feed and nourish him,
wee morsels on fingertips,
salt water with specks of life.
They leave him to bask on the sand banks
at the edge of the world.
You are the first in our family to whangai, ancient mother,
but there will be many more.
My Nana says there is nothing time and love can’t fix.
Great Southern Mother, she knows this by how that boy Māui rose back to life.
From your husband’s cool waters that pulled and pushed his muscles
long and supple to hold the Pacific on the back of his haunches.
Māui, he grew, and pulled the jaw from his grandfather’s mouth.
A gift with a resistance,
A conflict, a pulling;
his reflection in a spring.
Great Southern Mother, that boy became a man.
Set sail in Mahunui, used all the time and love to pull up the fish where I live,
floating back towards you out of its gaping mouth.
Your breeze beckons us both back to you,
as he places his great waka below the fish,
nestled by the mighty Waitaki;
braided tears of my ancestors,
my veins on prehistoric scale.
Hinepunui-o-toka, when my family named me, part of your name was lost.
Not for me was the south,
for I was just a daughter born to hold the family up.
The poutokomanawa standing central,
bridging our ground and sky
with the weight of generations on my shoulders.
Now I see generations below my feet,
in my rivers,
in your moko’s waka nestled in my histories,
a vessel of women tracing their names back to god.
When I stand with my hands outstretched and wiri,
I feel your ascent within me
my hands form currents,
pull the oxygen in my blood to my extremities,
a gift from you in each hā.
Even when I do not want to,
I have learnt to thank you when I exhale.
E Tīpuna Wahine,
I peer into our springs and your reflection looks back.
I was told we only see air when it touches the world it sustains.
Hinepunui-o-Toka, you are the wind that pulls my hair from my face,
you are the air I breathe into my koauau,
you are the songs we sing together,
as you and your daughters
send the wind, the birds, the echoes,
to pull me and my daughters
all the way
South
