Vā: The Space Between Us

Long before there was AI,

there was AI:

Ancestral Intelligence.

 

Rhythm, repetition, the sacred three,

patterns grandmothers taught us 

while weaving, while bent over fires, while sheets lifted  

and fell on the line. 

 

These are not the habits of a machine. 

 

I’m not here to judge any single story.

 

That’s not poets’ work. 

Poets point past noise 

to the nested limbs of banyans, 

its re-rooting branches, 

bush caves where spirits gather, 

whispering: remember, remember. 

 

When we turn on these gifts, 

it is the oldest and truest voices 

we silence first. 

To say inheritance is imitation 

is to get the story backwards. 

 

In Samoa we say  

teu le Vā: 

tend the space between us, 

the sacred distance 

that joins us 

rather than divides. 

 

In Samoa we 

talanoa 

we tell stories circling the kava bowl, 

everyone in their turn, 

talk dipping  

and rising like the sea. 

 

The Commonwealth is fifty-six nations 

tending that space, 

choosing to stay  

in the circle, 

choosing to keep  

talking across every line history drew. 

 

That tending runs on trust 

the same trust a poem asks. 

 

Creativity is the oldest medicine we have. 

 

The only pointing these fingers will do 

is towards the Vā.