Death of a Maori Poet
Tree let your raised arms fall
nor extend your vain entreaties to the radiant ball.
This is no gallant monsoon’s flash,
no dashing trade winds blast.
The fading green of your magic
emanations shall not make pure again
these polluted skies…. for this
is no ordinary sun
– HONE TUWHARE 1922-2008
published this poem “No Ordinary Sun” about nuclear testing in the pacific, in 1964, in his first volume of the same name. It was re-printed 10 times. I can’t help thinking he was one of the spearheads of the nuclear free movement that defines New Zealand’s foreign policy today .
Let us allow peace to reign from the natural radiance within us all.
I used to have a little badge from friends of the earth ” World peace begins at home”. My 16 year old daughter wears it now. Where there is life there’s hope.
The Book I Wanted to Buy For My Mother
For many years I wanted to buy a book for my mother — a book that would explain everything: what I hadn’t or couldn’t explain since I had been old enough to notice my mother wasn’t all that happy and, Lord knows, I wanted my mother to be happy and if not “happy” per se, then at least aware of what it was that made me, her son, happy — the “thing” that for so many years she thought was a phase I was going through and, even worse, some kind of heartless rejection of her and her way of life.
Yes, I wanted to buy my mother a book that would explain it all — the whole “New Age thing,” the whole “Guru thing,” the whole “it’s OK that I don’t eat your veal parmigiana any more because I’m a vegetarian thing.” Somebody must have written it. Somebody must have noticed the market niche of “mothers over 60 who worry why their high performing sons have gone “spiritual”.
And so, I went looking for this book. Like some people look for God. And though I never found it, I did find some reasonable facsimiles. Cleverly titled books displayed by the check out counter, conceived by marketing geniuses who somehow knew my need — the need a son has to make his mother smile and nod her head approvingly. The book that would keep my mother company during those long nights when her husband was working late and her children were asleep and there was nothing good on TV. The ultimate self-help book that would remove her worries, her doubts, and her exponentially growing fears of thinking her son had gone off the deep end for “receiving Knowledge” from that young boy from India.
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