every leaf is an ear / notes toward a transmitted topography of kapiti island

thin sentinels as irregular stickforms. their shadows trace uncertain linearities into the tympanic fluttering of sea. everything is salt-throbbed, the invisible shipwrecks, the windfaded, dull harvest tones of oxidation, corrosion. lichens, as though inspired, restate similar tones, a mimicry across the register, mineral to vegetable. a boat, cupped as an ear, roosts above the waves, as the sea asks and asks. we say : 'to keep going is hard, with no answer.' but this language has both human and inhuman listeners, it has fallen on rocks, over and over. what arrogance to say : 'deaf as a stone'. a coast of cochlear whorls and folds, such seismic traces suggest instead a listening in to instability, on this map the plates of geographic shell hang, as a pond-skater rests. gulls emerge from the dawn as messengers, stray signals from a still burning black, empty and crackling. they quieten as light flashes landscapes - fleeting, mirrored - on the sea's meniscus, as the sky is hung with hawks ascending a different knowledge of the air, below, that ancient heatmap bright with wing-shivering morsels, a pattern scattered as daylit stars.

waiorua bay, 4.4.2012