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.

my old friend I wonder how far north you travel? The road goes west starting two doors up from the Dog’s Bollocks ending at sunset. So many sunsets Facebook and Instagram couldn’t contain them. So many yellow lines, white stripes there’s hardly a Valiant left to defy them. Now the years overtake us. Visits as a boy to Uncle Bruce and Aunty Lindy in their K’Rd council flat led me to the greatness of  the great north whipping its dusty tail up to the skyline of  Reinga. Yet why do I see your darkness as silence my friend? You’re a sleek black eel pumping blood all the way to Karekare, to Muriwai, to Bethells, to Piha, and our vehicles surf the surges back to K’Rd, back and forth, LOL, rocking up our shock absorbers and surfboards. Keep bringing the waves Great North Road. Keep saving the whales! Keep the toheroas shining tucked away from spades in sandy bolt-holes. Smile in your cars and honk honk honk on the Great North Road.