This is not my home - edited

[vagabond]

My mother birthed me in a wild, abandoned place.
Acres of thick silence, in all directions. In Spring,              stubbed rainforest? then the silence is disturbing
patches of pink and white stand out on the hills
like foreign flags in all the green, marking the mission        good metaphor  to show the invasion  
orchards; cherry trees, apples, peaches. 
Raspberry and blackberry thickets, clumps 
of strawberries, spread along creek flats 
through paddocks of potatoes, puha, corn. 
The missionaries came, and changed us.                  maybe there´s something i miss but when you write the missionaries came.. haven´t they been there already? (you write of mission orchards 5 lines above).

Old ways of living destroyed, overcome by loss,
the people mourned. Privation followed. 
Lethargy. Alcohol. My father battled 
this through all his days. Then he died. 
‘It’s not my responsibility’ I tell him. 
‘Stay out of my moe’ I tell him.

He says my home is Waikato.
When first prophet-warriors spoke 
even the ancestors changed sides 
and everything became confusion. 

I haven't travelled there. He waits. He says
my land hungers for me, as it hungers for Spring. 
He pleads.



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

i like the way the stanzas become shorter as what was once home  is further deconstructed.
a sad one, home is where the heart is but when the heart is broken or lost..