Te Moananui a Kiwa Kauwhakatuakina Jackson: Poroporoake
April 3rd 2022, Matahiwi Marae, Nā Karlo Mila.

Our final exhale
beyond the breath,
where we give ourselves up
in completion
to life.
Where everything that you are
leaves behind
everything that you were.
It is a spindrift
that rises,
departing
that faithful friend
of the body.
Its soft limbs.
Its forgiving flesh.
Muscles, skin, sinews -
all that held you together -
so gently,
for so long.
A song
of water, blood, star, breath and bone.
We acknowledge all that you have left behind.
All that you have given,
and what a life you have seen,
and what a life you have been,
and how we have loved you.
We stay here,
with that precious vessel
that carried you
through this life,
but cannot carry you
into the next.
And may we who loved you,
holding your song,
the blood, star and bone vessel
of your being,
may we carry the meaning
of your life forward
into the world of light,
so that it will reach
those who come after.
He waka herehere ngā waka.
The vessel that binds us
to the great moving fleet.
He waka o Moana Nui-a-Kiwa.
He waka o Ātea-a-Rangi.
Moving between worlds.
Kahukura.
Old star.
Shining One.
The ancients
walked ara tāwhito,
wading awa,
chanting the stars
into fresh waters,
calling, hauling
the shining ones,
pulled down by prayer
into the rivers of the whenua,
into the rivers of bloodlines,
for brief human cycles.
You, into the rivers of the Waiapu,
into Wairoa-hōpūpū-hōnengenenge-matangi-rau,
Tukituki and Ngaruroro.
You, who could feel
all that was filled with the telling,
translate, narrate,
enlightened: able
to hold the darkness
none of us should forget.
You who carried the dusk, diligently -
the soft, rebalancing darkness -
into rooms bright
with white and right,
and majority might,
into rooms blinded
with artificial light
claiming justice.
You, who could touch
the dark matter,
the dark energy,
between us –
illuminating pō
in all that white,
until it became palpable,
tremoring,
undulating slowly
from unconscious to conscious,
from invisible to visible.
Once it is seen,
it cannot be unseen.
You carried the weight and fate
of that long-lasting cloud,
imprinted with the soft gasps
of last breaths
of thousands
of broken-hearted.
How they breathed through you
into every room.
How they sought our silences,
found the right words in you,
singing a lament that bent
your tongue
to speak a star-compass
for finding our way home.
Ātea-a-Rangi here, in this sphere.
How they looked through your eyes into ours.
Watching for that quickening quantum movement
of mauri kore to mauri ora: soul retrieval
- the rising of the divine feminine — mana wahine –
the rebalancing of energies.
There is nothing natural
in, and on, and of,
this whenua
that does not mihi,
with us,
to you
in gratitude.
Enough,
it is enough.
Carried,
it is carried
on.
You will forever be
standing on this paepae
with your singing words,
as we reference you endlessly,
ushering in the next wave of knowing.
You speak with
a congruency
a fluency,
a coherency
so rare, that we find our feet.
A whole generation now see themselves
through your matapihi:
double visioned, a critical lens,
stereoscopic –
what we see,
and what we could see -
if we were to dream with clarity.
We gather here, armed,
assembled, weapons in hand.
A taua wielding words and logic,
clauses and references,
and reasoning.
None of us afraid
of the sound of our own voice.
For you’ve carved
open neural pathways:
illuminated runways
lit with ancient fires
for flying waka
out of the mouths-of-babes -
this nek-generation
speaking revolution,
revising constitution,
ancient intentions
ancestral inventions.
The gifting of your knowing -
into the rivers of whakapapa -
into the shape of preserved, curving words,
into an awa of re-imagining,
into unblocked neural pathways,
into bloodstreams of hope.
Travelling the long arc of justice
inevitably involves a return
to centre.
When we enter the awa of bloodlines,
there is only so much pushing upstream
the flow of life will allow.
Patricia writes:
“There is no great distance in the reaching
because we are our own tupuna.”
That old double-spiral.
We close our eyes now,
feel the galaxy ever accelerating and expanding through us…
How simply we have felt this momentum
through you.
We close our eyes,
surrender
to the flow of natural currents,
we re-enter
the rolling ocean of galaxy,
waves of night
clustered with stars
to the constellations
beyond our dreams,
bursting with beginnings.
We return
enroute to the
epicentre,
of every-living-thing.
Reaching up
through the dark womb
to the tipuna stars
who birthed us,
knowing,
glowing,
radiant,
remembering finally,
who
and what
we are.