Sunday, August 31, 2014

A Boat called Horse

at Little Shoal Bay                                    


For your oars only
Kvort -- the plump pink catamaran  
Wind Song
Tamatea
Pashun
Irene
Luci
all high and dry and injured, waiting to be rendered.

Rapid Tranzit
Horse
Tanimara
Maungarorga
Midnight
Blow Me
all at rest on one side, waiting for the tide
(and the wind).

Also a digger called Caterpillar and
a rudder called R.I.P. Geoff Morris.


Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Beauty Spots


Here was us so sick and the weather so well
that we ventured out: one coughing boy;
one sneezing girl.

With our tentative aches in our mobile incubator with ready brakes, to the beauty spots, better seen slow,
on days like this when there's nowhere else to go.

Days with swooping gulls and slicing yachts
the only whites on our blue beauty spots.



A Tui tar black in a lacy tree,
whistles thrice, then a sharp coughing crack,
clearing her throat in sympathy.

A Kingfisher on the bow of a boat
stops high and dry in Little Shoal Bay,
looks thoughtfully out, nothing stands in its way.

Ice cream sweetens the sour
in slow motion hour;
as a baby swan follows its Mum
learning, as she goes, what it is to be young.

Pairs of ducks and one nervy rabbit
visit our view, by mistake or by habit.

'Rest awhile' says Anne Maud Craig (d. 1991)
so we do, on her bench, Notting-hill style,
head in lap. Content.

All the while we cough, sneeze and ache
in these blue beauty spots
of bay, sea and lake.















Friday, August 22, 2014

Nature v. Nurture


A tomb dated 1848 in our local cemetery, photographed in 2014 overrun by a native Pohutukawa, but not giving up without a fight.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Watch me roar




The storm appears to say:
'I am storm, watch me roar!'

Rain rushes to the window
jostling for space
wanting a look in;
not wanting to be left out.

It's mayhem out there,
the storm is in a right panic:
stampeding; demanding
to be heard,
to break through the glass.

Friday, August 15, 2014

I do and I don't

Love Mum
Have regrets
Want to go for a swim

Know what you're thinking
Feel for the poor
Resent the rich

Live for the moment
Understand you
Like teaching dance

Believe in change
Know everything
Enjoy the writing of Lydia Davis

Friday, August 8, 2014

Retraction


This I love, but not so much
some of her earlier stories;
should anyone care what I think,
which they probably don't and won't.



I fell under her spell
as others fall under a bus
I survived, bruised and broken
to worship her the more, I must.

Till she punched me in the face
for having the gall not to die
Took me on a wild goose chase
to make me believe the lie.

Told me the tables have turned
when I know they can't and won't
Made happiness hollow and hokey,
till the darkness cried out Don't!

Then she wrote:
'There are limits to what you can accept,
even in impossible things'
and I felt I understood again
the sweetness in the sting.

And while I keep on going
for that sweet stinging thing
I can't and won't accept
the need for sisters to be grim.
 






Sunday, August 3, 2014

Cat up a Tree


TT the tabby cat 
up the cabbage tree, 
just high enough 
to eye-ball me. 
Filled with a look
of high anxiety, she says:
'Stop what you're doing!'
'Come and rescue me!'

So it's downstairs I go
in a state of urgency
to open the front door
quicker than a key.
Then after a wait
to show she's in no hurry
in waltzes madam,
the tabby cat, TT.