Untitled
beyond the ash cloud
what is left?
ruaumoko won’t be able to
c o n t a i n h i m s e l f
but if he does
lying still
walk across the road and look
down
through the skin of the volcano
see the street below
cobbled, covered, underfoot
debris formed of our shared history
slicing through rolling forms
roads
paths
composed of:
names
newspapers
voices
fragments of meteorite
an overcast suitor
a shallow drinking bowl with scalloped edges
mangroves
Ash
Ash
so much Ash
all swept up in the muddy path
bitten
by the sea
with nauseous boredom
I trip over igneous rock
decant iron sand into my sneakers
twist my ankle to get to the water
squint to the horizon
(see those aliens)
sucking and pumping beneath the sea floor
cables linking us to the cloud run undersea too
buried deeper still
slumbering volcanoes
lava pillows once spewed from
their mouths
not anymore
THE NAME
RUAPEHU
DOES NOT APPEAR
TO COMMEMORATE ANY EVENT
IN MAORI LEGEND
eruptions
may comprise
huge volumes of explosively
fragmented rocks
none
of
which
gently oozed like lava
from
a
volcanic
vent.
broken into its components
(two)
and pehu (to explode
make a loud noise).
but this method of breaking down
in order to explain
their meaning is far from reliable.
lahars can b e h u g e
long-extinct volcanoes
buried deep below the sea floor
the most explosive
asd
l a h a r s have the consistency, viscosity
and approximate density of wet concrete:
fluid when moving, solid at rest.
Ana Iti (Te Rarawa) is an artist based in Ōtepoti. Working across sculpture, moving image and text, her practice often explores our relationship to language and place.
