I started writing this poem last year while I was on book tour and traveling the West Coast. One afternoon in Los Angeles, I walked from Venice Beach to Santa Monica.
I was nursing a new crush, and I was enjoying that period where you can sense that something might be going on but you’re not quite sure. I was also thinking about the man I had been seeing, and it occurred to me how “distant” we had always been—different cities, different stages of life, etc. I had been thinking, too, about Polynesian voyaging traditions and the idea that I was following a path our ancestors had taken for thousands of years, traveling back and forth across the Pacific Ocean and sharing stories.
So, as I was strutting along the beach that afternoon, the first couplet occurred to me. The finished work resembles a traditional Māori poem—all of our old songs are about yearning for lovers across waters.
My ancestors knew the exact distance between the stars
and still had the desire to risk it all anyway. Voyaging
to the horizon where this world meets the next, feeling
for the boundary, and pushing the sky out even further.
I think about this when my want keeps wanting yours
when I look up at the sky
and pick the exact same star you are standing under.
I feel us like Te Kore, compass against my chest,
vibrating with potential and in the distance;
the crackle of chaos, the universe being ripped apart
like a bag of chips, starving, animal, schoolboy, wild
or could be if we were dumb
and godlike enough to drag ourselves into light.
Over cocktails at Ascot, I whisper my premonitions to Miriama,
goddess of the sea, who reminds me that every hopeful star
skimmed across oceans causes ripples and the thing about water is
you can never quite predict what kind of reaction you will get.
Perhaps it will lie down flat like a lover and give you highways
to drive your hands over or
it might assume the shape of tsunami, taniwha you can’t prepare for.
So think about which wishes you wish to rip from the sky
before you throw them burning wide into the land of the living.
Just because you are made of that brave waging stock
doesn’t mean you should do, or take anything you want.
I think about this when my want keeps wanting yours
when I think I can cheat the distance
conjure you to me through the cables that map the seafloor.
We stand on different sides of many oceans
and here
at the center of my ancestors’ creation is where I belong
but every now and then I hope you think of me
on the beach with my girlfriends
dripping in bone, stone, and gold
your waves crashing quietly on my shores
my eyes on our horizon, searching for your birds.•
This poem appears in Issue 25 of Alta Journal.
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Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau-ā-Apanui/Ngāti Porou) is the author of the poetry collections Poūkahangatus and Rangikura. In 2017, she earned a master’s degree from Victoria University of Wellington, where she was the recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand.
