Maris O’Rourke – Will we make a place for them?

Maris LE P&W 3 Nov-Dec 2024

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Three November-December 2024

Aotearoa Poets and Writers Special Edition

Will we make a place for them? – poems by Maris O’Rourke.


Will we make a place for them?

Big mammals, nearly extinct, names lost from Te Reo,
appear again at Rakiura, Otago Peninsula, The Caitlins.
Once a sacred Māori taonga – it’s like the Moa returning
or a mythical selkie materialising in Scottish mist.

Sea lions are coming home – after 300 years of exile.

In the subantarctic islands females struggle,
make deeper dives for less food, drown as by-catch
in the nets of squid-trawlers. Pups wait – pine, starve.
Marauding bulls harass, disease decimates.

Deep ancestral memory, of safe breeding, birthing,
feeding places – calls – across 500 kilometres.

Hauling-up on mainland beaches – huge, social,
inquisitive, adrenaline-producing – their gruff
demeanours evoking distrust, resentment, panic, fear.

Preyed upon by dogs – run over, stabbed, gunned down
by us.


Sifnos/ Σίφνος

awake early crosswise

bats swoop home
dusky pink shades
the lemon horizon
shot-silk sea metamorphs
turquoise aqua azure

Blue

that solid Greek blue
of shutters doors tables
panagia-domes windmills
plastic-bags bottle-tops
chairs gates fences eyes

Blue

like job lots of God’s
paint spread spilled into
every crevice and gene

Blue

set against hard bright white
wash of blocks buildings
piled everywhere as if
by a manic child.

Blue

I visualise myself
in a full-skirted swirl
of brilliant blue browse
markets scour shops
ferret outlets but
I never find that

Blue.


© Maris O’Rourke

Maris O’Rourke describes herself as a poet and peregrina, a writer and walker. She has been writing for 10 years and published 10 books – a memoir Zigzags and Leapfrogs; a family history; two poetry collections Singing with Both Throats and Paradox; and six children’s books (two in Te Reo). She lives in Mt Eden with her whānau and regularly retreats to Whaingaroa/Raglan to write and walk.

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