The Big, Glittering Universe, considered from Okurukuru

The big, glittering Universe is everything that happens. outside the shadow of my emptiness It is bodies of excitation shaking the grass under the gleam of midnight It is your eyes in the wind whispers in the crimson of Rātā trees even the sea feels like your hunger on my skin

The universe is an unelaborated secret floating in the infinities of time and space I cannot imagine it without you Love is the metamorphosis of a butterfly craven obsession of a lepidopterist the very jungle where nightly we come to dance. The Universe is larger than the infinite, the part of us made of nights and destroyed stars twinkling decay It must be for us, if we can still fall in love. Patina of obsidian glow on the waves near Okurukuru moon and the sea renewing their courtship cling with arms and legs & our heads spin like planets

In your hands, atoms and molecules of ancient beings her breasts rising like the silhouette of the Pouākai range a landscape of seduction since time immemorial.

Climbing the Mounga from Upper Kāhui Road as a Religious Experience

All else lies far beneath me, Or in fact, above,

And I, between two worlds, uncertainly standing

It is a cool, crisp Sunday morning in summer

I am a pilgrim; this is not a climb

But a religious experience, to baptise my soul

Into the pool of this natural world

With eyes uplifted towards a vision of grandeur

Yet without power to soar upward

It is a long climb, trailed by piwakawaka

And old fallen totara rotting on the floor of the forest

The steps to heaven are built with love and dedication

But timid on the land in the face of awe except this constant, strong desire to rise; stronger with each step

It seems so strange the higher up we go—

The farther from earth’s suffering cries, The stiller my heart becomes

I am dissolving into this sacred land.