All we have is the urupa

My body became clay
Wefting into golden brown
Drying before becoming wet

I climb the slippery urupa
In leather healed boots
Stumbling through fog eyes

My body became a grave
Tugging at the weeds
Seeping onto the curved mound

I notice the shifts of the soil 
Returning down deeper into the whenua
Between the two tī kouka trees 

My body became a mokomoko
A tohu of things to come
Perhaps there was a makutu

I think of disease as being dis-ease
There is utu between all things
But i flood a river

My body became a whisper
Images of water without rhythm
A camera shutter that would not turn

Hana Pera Aoake

Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Waikato/Tainui) is an artist, writer and sweaty milf. They are the author of three books of poetry(ish) and have three more in the works including a collection of essays and manifestos, On how to be, which is being published by Discipline in Naarm later this year. Mostly they are a PhD student researching industrial poisoning and Māori labour histories in the eastern Bay of Plenty.