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    Face to the Sky
    Face to the Sky
    Face to the Sky
    Ebook95 pages50 minutes

    Face to the Sky

    By Michele Leggott

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    About this ebook

    In her latest collection, Michele Leggott speaks to the art and writings of nineteenth-century New Zealand painter Emily Cumming Harris. Face to the Sky tells stories of love and loss from two woman in the shadow the same mountain, more than a century apart. 'Voices sing from the archive: a choir of breakers on a North Taranaki beach. Two women born more than a hundred years apart tell stories of love and loss in the shadow of the mountain that is always there. One of them becomes a painter of botanically accurate native flora, and writes all her life. The other, now without sight, lives in a world of sounds caught into expanding webs of memory. She listens for the other, tracing the delicate shapes of what she cannot see, taking her cue from the words of others. She listens and travels, picking up connections over time and place. Mothers and fathers come and go, adding their voices to the tumult on the beach, the shadow of the mountain, the hills above Nelson where the first woman comes to rest. The second, living between two small volcanos in a northern city, waits for a miracle that might cure the lymphoma that has been tracking her days. Through it all, the familiar phrases of the weather forecast sound their ever-hopeful, ever-changing predictions.' — Michele Leggott
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateApr 13, 2023
    ISBN9781776711079
    Face to the Sky
    Author

    Michele Leggott

    Michele Leggott was the inaugural New Zealand Poet Laureate 2007-2009 and received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2013. She is the author of nine books of poetry, including, Vanishing Points, Heartland, Mirabile Dictu and Journey to Portugal. Leggott's latest work, Mezzaluna: Selected Poems published in 2020, gathers poems from all nine of her previous collections. Leggott lives in Auckland, where she teaches in the English Department at the University of Auckland.

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      Book preview

      Face to the Sky - Michele Leggott

      EARLY MORNING CLOUD

      Konene | Wayfarers

      there it is

      the Peter Buck memorial

      a canoe prow

      sticking out of the trees on the hill we pass

      on the main road north

      leaving or coming home

      in the primers we learn

      that Peter Buck was a famous man

      who went to our school a long time ago

      he was born across the river

      where the swing bridge is now

      we know this is true

      because our mother shows us the stone chimney

      in the paddock where sheep graze on our way to the beach

      we imagine

      Peter scarfing his breakfast and paddling across the river

      to get to school

      a long time ago

      did he see the Chinese lantern bushes as he walked

      up the hill to school

      were there sheep around the stone chimney

      smoking on the river flat below

      did he pull out a shanghai

      and ping the magpies on the fence

      was he friendly with the Herlihys

      and the kids from Okoki

      Peter Buck was a very famous man

      his canoe sticks out of the hill on the main road north

      red and white and only the prow

      coming out of the trees in pointy concrete

      where is the rest of the canoe

      one day we turn off the road

      and bump along the track to the hill

      there is deep shade under the trees

      and fierce heat where light cuts in

      slanting

      a shutter clicking open and closed

      open and closed

      but no canoe

      only a concrete bunker with steps going up

      to the platform

      where the prow rears itself against the sky

      Te Rangi Hīroa

      Peter Buck is here

      in the vault below our feet

      laid to rest and looking north

      always north

      Te Rangi Hīroa

      oh yes he is here

      not at all in the vault but here

      ponga heads coiled and uncoiling

      blue and black and iridescent

      over the edge of the platform

      a shutter clicking open

      a shutter clicking closed

      close enough to touch

      blue and black and iridescent

      a word the five year old will meet in time

      wingbeat | featherfall

      and pull towards the moment

      wingbeat | featherfall

      a long time ago

      when Peter Buck was there among shadows and tall trees

      on the hillside at Okoki

      Speaking distance

      Who is speaking? Our correspondent on the hill above the river, making pictures for exhibition in other places. Each stroke of his pen ricochets across the valley. He sees what he wants to see. He does not hear what he cannot see. A smoking ruin behind him. Another waiting just around the bend. Airy particulates.

      A path leads from the pa to a ford of the river hard by, which was that traversed by the raiders on their return.

      Nothing was heard but the occasional yell until about 8 p.m., when we could again distinctly hear the yells again repeated, and then all was again quiet, save the sentinels’ ‘All’s well’.

      was, it seems, waha, mouth

      The stream at this spot is about 90 yards wide, and its depth is about 3 feet.

      Then a shout of ‘Stand to your arms’, which was followed by a heavy volley from the rebels, who set up a most unearthly yell.

      wavering, with two hearts

      The south bank is flat and low, and on that side there is a good deal of marsh.

      They were full of determination, and at times came within speaking distance, inviting our men to come on, who replied by recommending them to stand out.

      led the women in resisting the survey

      The north bank is high and steep, and its precipitous sides are clothed with karaka and fern trees, whose luxuriant foliage, thickly matted with the vine, and parasite plants which grow there in abundance, forms a sort of vegetable wall.

      Several old women were vociferous in encouraging the enemy.

      to get shell-fish from the reef

      The landscape is extremely pretty.

      They were blowing their horns and shouting for a long time, and in the morning it was found that the sap rollers had disappeared, and also a quantity of gabions.

      this white flag is not an emblem of peace

      The camp shows above the windings of the river, which pursues

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