Black tribal tattoo with koru spirals and fine patterned filler across the back of a hand, reaching towards the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal koru design across the back of a hand

Blackwork · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A bold tribal-style design of sweeping blade-like shapes and curling spirals covers the back of the hand and runs up towards the wrist. Solid black outlines are combined with fine patterned infill and dotted detail within the shapes. Only black ink is visible, shown in a close, angled view against a textured grey fabric.

Blackwork Hand Tribal Spiral Hand Wrist

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gouge had gone dull by the third week of frost, and old Wiremu would not let anyone else put a stone to it. He sat at the bench under the lean-to with the shed doors shut against the wind coming off the paddock, turning the blade in his fingers as if it might answer him. Behind him, half freed from its cradle, the canoe prow lay on its side like a sleeping animal waiting for its face.

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"Keep the curl open," he said, and passed me the mallet. "A koru is a fern that has not yet decided to be a fern. Rush it and the spiral closes up, and you have made a shackle." I laughed, and he did not. The long blade shapes ran down the wood, each one hemmed with tiny dotted cuts he called the rain marks, and I learned that the darkness of the pattern comes from the grooves that hold the shadow.

In January his hands began to shake, and he asked me to finish the spiral at the base, where the sharpest blade sat against the grain. I cut it slowly, with my tongue between my teeth, and when I looked up he had gone to the door to check the weather, or to pretend he had.

In spring the prow went down to the river on rollers. The fern at its tip had opened, the first curl turned toward the water as though it meant to go first. The old gouge hung on its nail above the bench, still sharp, and I have never once let it go dull.