Spoken: Recent Episodes

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Especially privileged was I, when Paula and Mark asked if I would write a poem to be read at the wedding. Which is a beautiful opportunity to put down in words some of what the goodness of marriage and choosing someone who you can build a life with, can be.

The image of a garden seems appropriate – we don’t marry because we’ve discovered something beautiful, but because we want to create something beautiful. So this is the poem that I wrote and read for my darling friends.

A Garden.

Today, my love – I am giving you a meadow.A meadow is a wonderful place to begin something new.We have seen this full run of seasons;summer, autumn, winter and springpassed over in each other’s eyes, held hand in handI know what seasons look like on your faceI am comforted, I am hopeful, I am sure.So now in this summer, I give you a meadowfull of wildflower, full of promiseso we may begin in earnest.Let me tell you – how I want to build you a garden here,A corner devoted to each season –There daffodils in spring, here falling leaves for autumnFrom an oak tree that bends but cannot break in winter storms.And every year, roses in summerBlooming over and over, recounting the fragranceby which I loved you first, and love you now.I long to see the trees grow older and take their shapeAgainst the prevailing wind provide some shelterFor each sacred herb and flower, that may feed usAnd to sit at the end of day beside you, always beside you.Let us be entwined together, anchored securely in this earthNever one removed from the other,each bringing life to the other.Today I am giving you a meadow,Tomorrow I am making you a garden.

On sharing a poem that has been shared with the world

This poem will always be Mark and Paula’s but I share it gladly, as do they. The only request is that you let me know so I can share in the joy of knowing how these words spread love and joy.

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From the essay ‘There are Signs Everywhere.”

Today, the tui sang and I walked into the backyard to see it eating from the ripe, sweet fruit on the apple tree. It looked up at me and sang again. We share a moment and then a moment more. The winter is over. The tree that was bare has borne fruit. Stay the course, don’t give up. Seeds buried might grow to trees and even then, you might wait another season before the tree bears fruit. But keep reading the signs along the way and you’ll be ready, when the moment comes. Pay attention.

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I wanted to preface this episode with a content warning - the essay I am reading is called Dear Kid. I was reminded of it by a friend who has recently experienced a miscarriage and so I wanted to let you know, this essay speaks to the hope and possibility of parenthood, which for many is a longed-for state. I have experienced my own hopes and changing expectations over the years, so I offer this ahead of Mothers Day. Skip to the 10-min mark to go straight to the poems - two fresh-born pieces for you.
“I wake up on Mother’s Day, kid – and I’m thinking of you. If you don’t ever make it, it’s okay. I promise. Everything I’ve learned waiting for you, I needed to know anyway. But I wanted you to know, kid, that I’m your Mama through and through. Even the idea of you is a gift I’m glad of, a point in the compass that guides my way. I’ve been your mother my whole life.

Rest easy, kid. Maybe soon. Keep an eye on the stars and the moon – I watch them too, and I believe in magic.”

The poems are called Dragonfly and How to Write a Poem.

I chased Dragonfly down all summer and it finally arrived this week. How to Write a Poem showed herself soon after.

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An essay from my other collection Lost & Found about finding your way back to the Dreaming Road, remembering that Enough is not always able to take the place of Everything. Followed by a fresh poem.

Leaving You Behind

How will I tell you now when I have changed?
You no longer see the reflection of your eye in my eye
You no longer see

I see the arc of the seabirds over the wind
The soft apricot of dawn over tide
You ceased to see some time ago

It has taken me much longer to pause
my looking for you, my looking to be seen

You might see the wind has pushed and pulled me about
The tide rushed at my feet
The oyster catcher had stern words with me
I am a little more unkempt, dressed by sky
Freckles from childhood called back by sun’s kiss

I have been changed by the course of the wind,
my body shifting, dunes buffeted by the onshore wind
Some parts of me fall, others grow fuller

I am softening now, that leather of breastplate
no longer braced for your storm.

How will I tell you, the mere degrees I have turned
towards the sun yet found
my steel-caged heart melting
The bar across my harbour
falling back into deep waters
The salt; crisp on the curve of fresh skin
preserving me, an imprint of how I was
While my warm, softer flesh falls into new shapes.
I lost a shadow in the last days of summer,
Moved your mountain a full inch westward on the map
I made myself more daylight in the East;
reclaiming hours in a forest that counts
a decade as a single day
I moved that mountain and gave your shadow up
to silence the shag’s appetite
Making unapologetic, warm space for my heart
How will I tell you - the landscape bears your shape
but my own will overtake it
shadow will no longer fall on me in damp winter
or the long stretch of summer burn me
the shorebirds remain to sing their songs and
dawn chatter for me
You now ageless and I ageing on,
how will I tell you how I am growing old
I tell the oystercatcher, he squawks again
he and I of the same age

Perhaps the black billed gull will bear it,
Carrying word into the horizon
while I am ankle deep in tuatua beds
Or dug into the hillside for the passing shower
In the steps between the chapters of my life
Harvest, gather, shelter, thaw —
I moved that mountain of undone things

I have kept the still waters running
in the deep spring of this river —
calm above, swift beneath.
From that dark crevice now —
a clear run out to the inlet

Salty spray flying while I bait the hook
I have learned how to cast into the harbour.
I would tell you that and other things too

Later I will find the language
An offering that echoes what it is
In the river that runs to harbour
Where I am born of the land and the lakes
You left no mark on the land but me to remain in it

How will I tell you that - I am what you made me
But I have become more than the sum of parts
The birds know and the moon sees it,
Rising and returning on me with regularity.

I swim in the dark water now
But mostly I wanted to tell you
I am finishing what was left undone
Collected the shells from the shore
Pulled seaweed from the tide
I finished planting the garden and
cleaning up the little messes that you left behind.

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In this week’s episode, open for all - a reading of two Sunday Kitchen Letters, A Pīwakawaka At The Kitchen Door and An Addendum, on the death of my father.
Finally, some poems on love, remembering and a liturgy for sleeplessness.

Thank you for joining me as I walk the halls of grief and wonder about what the future holds.

A Liturgy for Sleeplessness

At the counting of the hours

and as the ‘un’s’ collect before my eyes

The undone, unsaid and unfinished things in my body

The work of my hands

The unsolved puzzles of my day

May there be rest in knowing there is always something undone that we might sleep and rise tomorrow

The unfelt, unheard and unspoken things that haunt

Swirling in the soft, shadowy edge of the mind

Not enough to wake us but enough to jostle us from deepest slumber

Let my slumber be the safe and soft space for all that is un-

To become part of tomorrow, safe for tonight without needing my concern, my worry, my energy.

For today, I have given all portions and allotments that belonged to it.

But for the catchment of hours left in the night before dawn, grant me abundant mercy as I wander long hours in the small darkness, awake or dreaming.

Give me strength for the dawn. Satisfy even the curiosity of the deep night I find myself aware of.

May the alchemy of body and mind, mystery of eyes responding to light and noise relent — to the tonic of sleep; the easy weighted fall of eyelids, the slowing rhythm of breath.

I lay down into the rhythm of the hours and surrender to them, even the most unwilling parts of me. Grant me mercy in slumber and keep me there.

I offer my evening prayer to the morning and ask for the unknown knitting together of fibres, for entering the healing of deep rest.

For the peace and end of the day, done and undone, and for sleep.

Pax.

Remember is Quicker than Forget.

i.

Remember is quicker than Forget

on the track of a mind.

You are easy

to forget to think about

if I walk quickly in a forward direction

if I do not look back

– I do not think to think about you.

I do not write you down, I do not imagine words to shape you

Out of the nothing, back to the mind.

I do not remember to make you from memory, I would not remember to forget.

I leave nothing in memoriam, but everything is left behind regardless; in nothing-ness.

But – if I stop or pause,

if catching my breath on an airport concourse
at a train station;

driven but not driving and left to wonder

interrupted by a red light –

if I do not propel myself forward from you

in every moment unceasing;

then Remember is quicker than Forget – and catches up to me.

I encounter the memory of you
who taps me on the shoulder,

I collide with you, the thought and thinking of you.

Remember is so quick, Forget so slow.

Love is Not.

Before I knew anything hard or cruel
like the world is
I believed in fairy tales
with one dubious eye open – but even then
never wanted one
never thought Love would look a certain height or weight
or would gaze at me through eyes a certain colour
with skin a certain hue

I only hoped Love would be nothing
like I had seen in a movie or read in a book.
I hoped Love would be a new idea.

–

I hoped Love would be an anchor,
as steady as concrete or steel
and at the same time warm,
I wanted a paradox of my own to explore.

I hoped Love would feel strong
and sound like a cheerleader
believing each of my
mad, genius, over-sized and wonderful ideas
was in fact, wonderful.

I wanted to Love to find me wonderful, an endless curiosity.
An unending conversation.

–

Later the hard nature
of the world taught me
how I did not know
could not know
the touch or voice of Love,
the sound or the feel of it.

I spent long hours talking to
the stars and the moon instead
to the curve of the earth and rippling sea
cheeks made damp by
my own ocean of salt water
my days poured out like sand
a broken hour glass

I spoke aloud and asked
how I could not know the
sound of Love’s voice
after listening so long
unless I had never heard Love at all.

–

Before the Universe answered
in that long silent pause of breath that is
light reaching between two stars within my sight –
that long of a breath I was left waiting.

The Universe still did not answer me
but a feather fell at my feet saying
‘Love is itself, warm and waiting
stretched from the stars to the moon.’
But this truth I refused, my body shaking.

–

I climbed to my high place
stared out into the sea
in my smallest voice
whispered to the Silent in my silence.

…….

It occurred to me perhaps
I knew what Love should be
because I knew so well
what Love was not.
I said to the Love strung between
the stars and the moon and the sea
‘Let it be kind, strong and generous
when Love comes to me.’

–

I met Love on a Thursday
but we did not recognise each other.
I was following feathers and
by the time I did see Love in
kindness, strength and generosity
I had learned that when Love is strong,
Love will probably be stubborn and
not all kindness is admirable but
there are other things that Love is.
Even kindness takes some getting used to.

Love was busy telling me
what Love is and is not
and Love didn’t want me.

I leaned in and learned the lesson anyway
what is was to listen and talk to Love
and then I returned to my high place
as close to the moon as I could stand
far above the sea, and said to the Universe

Now that I know what Love feels like,
sounds like and looks like –
I think I must talk to Love no more.

It occurred to me that silent or speaking,
telling me what is and what is not,
Love and the Universe are much the same.

And the Universe was still silent.

The Parting Glass is a Celtic ballad, a farewell song often credited to the Irish but in true Scottish form - we claim the true origin. For many years, this has echoed as the song in my head when Dad wandered close to passing.
Just a glimpse of the haunting lyric -

Of all the money that e'er I had
I have spent it in good company
Oh and all the harm I've ever done
Alas, it was to none but me

And all I've done for want of wit
To memory now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be to you all

So fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health whate'er befalls
Then gently rise and softly call
Good night and joy be to you all

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I grew up with my mother’s voice in my ear, reading poetry and stories to us. It iss Hiawatha by Longfellow I remember the most. That rhythmic beat of syllables and echo that sounded somehow like leather and woodsmoke. She made words sound like music and transported me to a First Nations encampment beside a river.

Often I live in the world between words and sound. I write them, hundreds of them day after day. Sometimes I speak them. Most often, I find myself writing words that are meant to be spoken aloud.

I practice conversations while driving in my car that become letters or emails eventually. And even when I proofread from the page or the screen - I read it aloud.

So this podcast is short, to the point and hopefully a luscious little treat for your ears, the same way I love to hear my mother read Longfellow.

I publish written work in several collections of essays. In this podcast, I will read select works aloud along with snippets of poetry and old pieces of prose. So welcome to Spoken, a collection of essays and the sound of my voice.
This features an essay I published at the end of last year:

I hope you’ll enjoy this new audio feature.

Here’s the text of the poem, originally published here.
Counting Stars on the 19th Hour

this then, is how it can be

in the midst of a storm on the sixth day

of the seventh week but only the 19th hour

now making a star map from definitions

this then, is how it can be to know

but not make knowing a cage

instead just knowing, a long intention

and a longing for safe and true and kind

but knowing is measured so differently

this then, is how it can be to halt abruptly at the pass

the knowing and unknowing

one counts in minutes and hours and questions and answers and singular actions

and the other measures the expanse of singularity

like the universe, one ever expanding idea of another

a deep, blue diamond erupting from an earth stone

a long unceasing listen and look

this then, is how to see one thing as another

by definition of all things and nothing

a half of a half and a whole and an inversion

an upside-down moon, to see a star and not a starry sky

this then, is to kiss your counting – minutes, hours, touches, questions

with a soft, warm, expanding idea to hold them all

your knowing which is one thousand cuts in a stone chiseling me out

and my knowing one gleaming stone that holds the deep ocean and expanding sky

this then, is how it can be

to learn to count stars and the passing of time

in hours, words, questions and answers and

the size of an idea by the weight of warm navigation

from 19 to 20.

x Tash

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