I clutch my pounamu
When I enter this place
Clinging to my mana as the stares
Ripple through ashen waves
Of faces
Bathed in blissful ignorance
Faces that do not know
The kisses of Papatuanuku
Upon the soles
of their feet
Faces that do not recognise
The tears of Ranginui
As he weeps
For his separated lover
Nor the wailing
Of the whaea
Who sits wrapped in chains
Of the colonial nine-to-five
As she mourns what she could have had
But never had
The whaea is
My looking glass
Day by day
I scale a paywall
Of a trickster’s whare wananga
To claw back what was taken
From me
And just like Rangi
I lament for my separation
Of what I will never fully return to
I fear the shackles
that my people lock themselves into
Every day
To preserve their fractured wairua
Greenstone shattered,
The sharp blue eye
Of their manaia
Crushed in a sea of white footsteps
An accessory to their ivory tower
And so,
I clutch my pounamu
When I’m in this space.