By Robert Sullivan

In the warmth of night I put feet to my plan: waited

for my brothers to sleep. They’d spent the day

sharpening their hooks, repairing the great net,

filling gourds with fresh water. They’d bundled

taro wrapped in leaves sitting below the cross seats.

The bundles and the net would cover me,

especially if I said the chant to slow my movement

and my breathing. The moon became brighter

like a big fish eye as the chant hooked me.

I was holding my grandmother’s hook so tightly

a little cut welled red between my closed knuckles.

“Goodmorning, brothers,” I called and they cussed

and moaned until the next chant took us a further hundred

miles and then another until my chanting made them gasp

as we settled on a patch of ocean black with fish.

They forgave me, not that it matters. I took the bloody hook

and said my business to the ocean. It worked.

The fish rose and our descent was secured.

• Activities
• Nature
• Relationships

Poet Bio

Māori poet Robert Sullivan was born in Auckland, New Zealand. He earned an MA from the University of Auckland. His poems examine Māori culture; in a review, Craig Santos Perez says, “Sullivan shifts through the ever-changing terms of an oral tradition into the scripted presence of the word. … Sullivan suggests that the poem is a site for the intersections of Māori identity to enter into critical and lyric dialogue.” Sullivan edits the online journal trout and teaches creative writing at the Manukau Institute of Technology. See More By This Poet

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