This is not my home - edited

[Richard]

Hey just mercedes,
I really enjoyed this poem. Your language use is just wonderful in spots, and I think you deliver an important message here. My main suggestions would be to just explore some of your images and ideas more. I'll explain more below:

My mother birthed me in a wild, abandoned place.
Acres of thick silence, in all directions. In Spring, -This line is wonderful. "Acres of thick silence" is such a lonely beautiful image. The enjambment of "In Spring" also adds stress to an important word (Spring) in terms of the overall meaning of this poem.
patches of pink and white stand out on the hills
like foreign flags in all the green, marking the mission-Again, this is great use of enjambment for the simile about the foreign flags. The simile is also great because it reinforces your main idea.
orchards; cherry trees, apples, peaches. 
Raspberry and blackberry thickets, clumps 
of strawberries, spread along creek flats 
through paddocks of potatoes, puha, corn. -All of this plant imagery created a wonderful image in my mind.
The missionaries came, and changed us. -I love how the entire stanza is so focused on nature and Spring/birth, and then this line just stops it all cold.

Old ways of living destroyed, overcome by loss, -I feel like you could have gone into more detail about what old ways of living were destroyed. I'm just saying this because the first stanza was so strong with detail, that the first line here seems a bit vague.
the people mourned. Privation followed. 
Lethargy. Alcohol. My father battled
this through all his days. Then he died. -Did the speaker's father battle lethargy or alcohol or both?
‘It’s not my responsibility’ I tell him. 
‘Stay out of my moe’ I tell him. -I like how the speaker tries to avoid any responsibility because it wonderfully contrasts the father battling so hard.

He says my home is Waikato.
When first prophet-warriors spoke 
even the ancestors changed sides 
and everything became confusion. -I've read this poem many times, and I still don't get the last three lines in this stanza. Is this implying that the speaker is a prophet-warrior? I think this could be explored more, so it is clearer for the reader.

I haven't travelled there. He waits. He says
my land hungers for me, as it hungers for Spring. -I like how the poem returns to the idea of Spring because it is so strong with symbolism for rebirth, and I get the feeling that rebirth is a vital in this poem.
He pleads. -I love how this line stands out because it is so short. Its length tells us how important it is, and the fact that the poem ends with the speaker's dead father pleading with him/her allows the reader to draw his/her own conclusions about the speaker's next steps.



(moe - Maori for dreams)
puha - native green vegetable, like dandelion greens

I think the first and last stanza are wonderful. However, I think you could expand upon the second and third stanza. There really isn't much wrong with those stanzas, but I would like to see you go into more detail in them.

Cheers,
Richard