Wayfinders 6

 

Myths are made of stuff like this
great fleets from scattered stories
migrations from random voyages
of adventure curiosity and discovery

Tainui, Takitimu, Tokomaru
Aotea, Arawa, Araiteuru,
Mataatua, Mamaari, Mahuhu
Kurahaupo, Horouta, Nukutere,
Nga Toki-o-Matawhaorua,
and many others, conveniently
for Pakeha pseudo-scholars
and gullible generations to follow
compressed in time and memory into
the seven waka of a non-existent fleet

What then will we make
in a thousand years of myth-making
of these un-peopled sailings
beyond the horizons of the skies
by Pioneer 10 and 11,
Voyager, Galileo, Ulysses,
Surveyor, Pathfinder, Prospector,
Magellan and Stardust, and their
dead-safe no-risk journeys
to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Mars
Neptune, Venus, and the Sun himself
old Tama-nui-te-Ra,
and scattered islands beyond

Wayfinders without Wayfinders,
for the moment anyway
until the myth-makers arrive

© Ross Nepia Himona

poems