From Ancient Soil 

 I breathe earth’s winds, wait for the new dawn. 

On ancient Gàidhealtach soil my ancestors waited too.

Unsettled they left, sojourned in fierce seas –

became tangata tiriti  on tectonic isles.

Here I write, beneath Kapakapanui’s peak,

grafted in the Tree of Life.

~~~

“Gàidhealtach”: Scots Gaelic meaning ”Scottish Highlands’.

“Tāngata tiriti”: Te Reo Maori meaning ‘people of the Treaty of Waitangi’.

Craig A. Roberts Ph.D

About Craig

Poet Craig A. Roberts, tangata-tiriti, lives between the mountains and the sea on Kapiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand. There is a mountain close by called Kapakapanui. From its slopes and valleys flow the waters of the Waikanae River. His father’s forbears left their mountains and valleys of Central Highlands of Scotland, and his mother’s left fields of Northumbria. Over the generations the journeys of Craig’s forebears brought them to these antipodean isles. 

He worked alongside leaders on the frontiers of change amid turbulent worlds. Craig, an applied social scientist, holds a PhD in follower-centred leadership. Nowadays he helps others hear the call to voyage through their vocation through poetic sensemaking.  He writes through a Celtic lens on the restorative grace of Solas Chrìost [Christ’s Light] transforming yesterday’s fight with tomorrow’s life.

He has published five books for voyagers on the restorative power of the Holy Trinity moving amid the ‘otherness of life’ around us.