Arohanui.
If love is liquid,
then we are all made of her.
And this shower, been and gone,
means we each swim in liquid air,
making its way back to heaven.
And the molecules in me
do a little dance to sense the ones in you.
A kind of coming back to home,
in this one river with all its many tributaries.
This air, in which we flow and move,
reaching for one another,
not dependent on a solid footing,
but able to weightless float.
And these clouds on their trajectory
East, South,
with us adrift on their coat-tails.
Yes, if love is liquid, we both move in her,
and are made of her.
She, the aroha which gives us wings,
and the wet earth to keep us grounded.
And still humming underfoot
along her network of veins.
Arohanui, her sound, that of a call
which has an answer echoing,
though we might think of it as only
the wind, the rain.
And her touch,
as lovers underwater,
all arms and legs, and mouths wet with joy –
and all this body in between.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
December 2020
Arohanui – ‘Much Love’ in te reo Maori
Living Tree Poetry 