Two Poems - takahē

Dirt

A group of workmen sit on the street staring up at the slate being thrown from the rooftop. They fly in, they’re the flying kind, they like to group together on the floor. I write a shopping list while I wait for my student to arrive, snake a long line up the margin. The tarpaulin that covers the face of the house is a single sheet of blue. E. sprinkles a pale, grainy powder into the crack of her window frame. We don’t know what it is, so we say the name over and over again, warping the syllables into different shapes. Bags of dirt stacked by the door. Over long periods of time, the shells of small creatures collect in the sediment of rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans. She woke me up at 2.30 in the morning, lying on the floor, barking. The workmen have sectioned off the pavement with tape that reads CAUTION. When my student trips up on a word while reading together, we write it down on a blank flashcard to practise later, though he hates this task. A colony of ants swarms over the residue of a sweet substance. The humidity in the air is heavy. I remember the name of the powder then forget it again, scrawling loops on the scrap of paper. Blocks of concrete crack when they hit the ground. The fossilised remains of tiny, aquatic organisms.

Another Green World

After Brian Eno

I am a dreamer
who longs to become
a doer. By this I mean
I wish to cross the distance
between what I want to happen
and what actually does.
Between these two places
is a shifting landscape
of twisting paths, rivers, a forest
of dark trees. There might be
monsters. I could get lost.
But I am determined to leave
where I am living—I am sick to death
of my own thoughts.
I wonder what it will be like
when I get to where I’m going,
if it will be as green
as people say it is.

Bronte Heron is a poet and educator born in Hāwera, currently living in New York City. They are a Fulbright scholar, a Master of Fine Arts candidate at The New School, and a graduate of the International Institute of Modern Letters. Their work has been published by platforms such as The Baltimore Review, Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau, The Spinoff, and Mayhem, among others.