to Jack Le Baige
for years you told the story we’d already taken well to heart, fed like a cat under the table with our imaginings.
greymouth the tasman dark with rain, the swell skittering along the shore. the rivermouth could’ve been the night you’d just woken from.
you were running in the shower’s edge, the drops gaining heavier, heavier on the breeze, cloud doing away with the hills over the weatherboard town.
you were passing the gate, the white porch set back from the gouged road when you heard it: ‘don’t get wet, jack!’ ‘don’t get wet, jack!’ the parrot stood out on the verandah, a dream brought fresh out into day. colours, feathers unlikely as jungle or sailor’s story. you kept running, never forgot it.
sixty years of storm at sea, thunder down in the high-country you watched over. you made it in the end without even walking. carried on through in your eye.
are now with that bird, the miners’ hills, the rain that strips them down to gold
for years you told the story we’d already taken well to heart, fed like a cat under the table with our imaginings.
greymouth the tasman dark with rain, the swell skittering along the shore. the rivermouth could’ve been the night you’d just woken from.
you were running in the shower’s edge, the drops gaining heavier, heavier on the breeze, cloud doing away with the hills over the weatherboard town.
you were passing the gate, the white porch set back from the gouged road when you heard it: ‘don’t get wet, jack!’ ‘don’t get wet, jack!’ the parrot stood out on the verandah, a dream brought fresh out into day. colours, feathers unlikely as jungle or sailor’s story. you kept running, never forgot it.
sixty years of storm at sea, thunder down in the high-country you watched over. you made it in the end without even walking. carried on through in your eye.
are now with that bird, the miners’ hills, the rain that strips them down to gold
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