Vaughan_Rapatahana

 Kia ora ki katoa [Greetings to all].

Cornered by Coronavirus here in Aotearoa New Zealand, I wonder if any other Flying Islands contributors are Kiwi and might wish to share a reading, even if it is via Zoom…? Looks like we will be here for a while, despite escape plans being drawn…

Meanwhile a poem to warm everyone up, eh.

good old summer

summer

came back

with

a  HUGE  grin

s  p  r  e  a  d  e  a  g  l  e  d

all over its face;

a panjandrum

paintbrush

of lucent hues

imbued

with emollient

flourish.

 

its chortling

prodigal sun

flayed us all

i

n

t

o

happy    submission –

skin peeling,

smiles reeling,

balmy healing,

    &

a sort of

ubiquitous

mellow cadence

crooning through us all –

that winters’

frigid

casuistry

had  forced  us

to  forget.

                                    My daughter Pauline Canlas Wu – in Hong Kong – is the artist.

Te pai katoa [All the best].

Vaughan Rapatahana

Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genre in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin, Romanian, Spanish.

I am a Flying Islands poet – Atonement Macau, 2015.

Right now I am in Mangakino. Lake Maraetai is our mighty lake.

at lake maraetai

these swan

glide in

an ontology

alien to my own.

their empyrean metaphysic,

through all dimensions,

isomorphic

& immutable.

in their majesty

they t r a n s c e n d

       this lake

as they dip deep

    beneath;

as they glissade

with immaculate grace

   a c r o s s  

the      surface;

as they foster

their    funicular   of   cygnets 

in all directions.

this archipelago of swan

transubstantiate

my inauthenticity

into an ecstasy,

I could once

                  never own.