Now Is The Time

NOW IS THE TIME
Selina Tusitala Marsh

Now holds new
Which holds the niu
A floating coconut
Finding foreshore
To root and grow

Now

Flip it: won
Hear it: one
KNow it: one Now
Press it here
Watch: Now here
Now-here no-where Now here
Now hear:

When a painter dabs brush over canvas
The time is Now

When a poet tips her tongue and we trip over
The time is Now

When a dancer triple spins through the air limbing a story
The time is Now

The time is Now
pixelating and percolating

When the weaver folds whakapapa
Lifting living over dead
The time is Now

When the sculptor presses blade to clay
Begins to scrape away the dream dark day

When a photographer’s eye ensnares the sun
Slow-slow-slowing it for story to be spun

When a singer’s throat – Tui luminescence –

Soars on the note flying past through present
When the carver bites the first notches
Into wood’s story (how it waits, how it watches
For the hand that understands its way)
The time is Now

When a writer wrestles image to the ground
Pins it down with a plot, starts the count
The time is Now

When the taonga pūoro player breathes into bone
Inside us the dead inhale, we are never alone
And the time is Now

When a film-maker frames a close up
When a composer writes the notes up
When a playwright hands silence a cue
When a tā moko needle skin-sews

When a glassblower’s breath enters the molten
When a fashion designer cuts the first cloth bolt then
Rolls it out

The time is Now

When the ceramicist releases the first wobble
When the illustrator’s line crosses the first speech bubble
When the printmaker opens acid to plate
When the installation artist leaves it to fate
When the spoken word poet sings the first word
When a hundred bodies in kapa haka are one breath heard
The time is Now

Artists dig into the Now
Artists shake out the Now
Artists pirouette in the Now
Strut and stilhouette in the Now
Belt out tunes, worships in runes
Of the Now

Artists graffiti Now on train carriages
Neon-philosophise under bridges
Speak with flying hands in krump competitions
Call us from our couches, our lounges, our fridges

Our screens, our work schedules
Our frolicking politicking, our anxious unspeaking
Our over-crowded to-do lists unravelling
And call us into
The Now

We are awed into the Now
We are kept, wept, and leapt into the Now
We are beautified into the Now
We are scrutinised into the Now
We are crucified into the Now
Nailed by set thought, prescribed feeling
We are died into the Now
Raised by the why and the how
Of the Now
We are unwrapped by our hunger, resurrected by wonder,
Connected by blood’s thundering
Now

In our moa
Centre of it all