The first rope

S/he was wading in the river

buoyed by the intuition

there is only water between the sky

and the whenua and this wai

is how they talk to each other

afterwards they lit a fire

and fried leftover boiled potatoes in brown butter

using her kuia’s pan, when it was time for sleep

her hair was in the way of him

so she split it in three and

crossed one kelpy strand over the other

so he could take it apart over and over

in the morning he wears a top knot

where her braid used to be

Talia Marshall
from I hold you to me by a thread series on Substack

Talia Marshall (Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Takihiku) is a Dunedin-based writer. She has had work published in Poetry magazine, Landfall, Sport, North & South, Mana, Canvas, The Spinoff, Newsroom, Pantograph Punch and with City Gallery. In 2020 she was the inaugural Emerging Māori Writer in Residence at the IIML at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington, and in 2021 she won the Newsroom Surrey Hotel Writers Residency. Whaea Blue (2024) is her first book.

The Poetry Shelf Breathing Room: A place to enter and pause and take a long slow breath and then another, as you absorb the beauty movement joy stillness wonder movement of a poem.