Tears come

This morning I woke in fear

In the dream, I am in my home, far above Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

I look out the window at the blustered sunny sea

No whales today

I sit with an older man, ponytailed

He speaks wisdom to my heart

We carry the same knives

“Get out of bed, we’re moving the sheep”

The flock follows Dad out of the paddock, but one ewe splits off.

Dad and I chase her, but she is wild and mad alone now.

I am close to her.

We both pause

looking at each other.

We both hear the flock in the distance

“maaa”

She turns and walks steadily,

we are following their voices

past the manuka creek,

out the gate,

across the stream

Later, I am alone on the farm.

I sit at the round macrocarpa dining table,

now scratched and marked like a school desk

ten thousand days with my family

recorded on it’s surface

I look out the big window

myriad greens in the afternoon sun

pond, filled with reeds and long grass

apple tree, cherry and rose

fence, paddock, the poisoned tan poplar tips

above the kowhai and mahoe lining the stream

behind them the bushed valley

and manuka ridge

whipped cream clouds

and a baby blue sky

Serene Jones and Krista Tippet speak to me of grace

“Repentance — it’s a powerful word, as you said, and it really means, to walk in a different direction. It means to do it differently.“

A tui bomb-sweep bomb-sweeps across the valley

“I feel it like an earthquake underneath us — it feels to me like we’re in the middle of the Reformation. But people in the middle of the Reformation didn’t know it. It was only afterwards.”

a swallow swoops close to the window

“But what they knew in the moment, which is what we know, is, everything is falling apart.

Everything is falling apart, and something new is emerging.“

My body softens

I can feel the anger and confusion inside

transform into a sea of sadness

that gently fills me

tears come