This is not my home - edited

[tectak]

Nice stuff, merc. Not much to pick at so I will probably pick harder at what there is. The pedant in me says stick to the grammar issues but even here I am in famine...the whole thing is nicely blooming and it would seem a shame to trample on the flora.
Here goes:



My mother birthed me in a wild, abandoned place.Semi colon here otherwise next line is anti-gravity.
Acres of thick silence, in all directions. In Spring, In-in scrapes by but you are better than that with the word things.
 " Acres of thick silence in all directions, until Spring
spilt loud  patches of pink and white on the hills.
Like foreign flags on fields of green,
the trees marked out the mission orchards
with blossom of cherry, apple and peach"
Excuse this slight re-write. It is mostly to keep the tense of "birthed" away from "...pink and white STAND out"  Birthed past, stood past. Your poem.

patches of pink and white stand out on the hills
like foreign flags in all the green, marking the mission 
orchards; cherry trees, apples, peaches. 
Raspberry and blackberry thickets, clumps 
of strawberries, spread along creek flats 
through paddocks of potatoes, puha, corn. I could be wrong...I have not checked...but "paddocks" are exclusivey for the containment of animals, primarily horses. The word is, to me, suspect. If you used the word "plantings" instead, you would emphasise the man-made nature of the terrain...which is what you are about to confirm.
The missionaries came, and changed us. 

Old ways of living destroyed, overcome by loss,Not a complete sentence. There is a cause-effect which you do not nurture. Begin, then, thus; "With old ways destroyed  (......the people mourned)"
the people mourned. Privation followed. 
Lethargy. Alcohol. My father battled 
this through all his days. Then he died.Easy-peasy narration BUT unrelated "this" nonetheless. Too many choices...was it the privation, the lethargy, the alcohol or all (through these?) that did for him? Just restructure. Your poem. 
‘It’s not my responsibility’ I tell him. 
‘Stay out of my moe’ I tell him.Tell or told. It is a moot point...back to the narrative form,  I guess.

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

Nice. Very nice.
Best,
 tectak