Not leaning over
a collapsing box
picking through
ill fitted and
musty cloth with
secret holes that
let in pennies of cold
where neat seams
should be

No more taking
you home to re-hem
air out in the sun
and hoping you keep
your shape

Let those who care to mend
have their find

I want
a brand new love

Proudly claiming this tall tree,
swaying in its giddy height,
but unhappy in his shade.
I’m still struggling to keep

up with my father’s shadow.
His arm heaping concrete along
the mountain chains, raking great
slips of gravel off crumbling

hills. His shovel swallowing beaches
of sand. His tendon’d arms
and great leathered hands
remolding this earth into God’s

own country, hidden in the
folds of the pacific’s emerald
gown. Now we’re left here
waiting by the grey stumps,

gathering sticks for the small
fires. Feeling those cold world
winds, looking up and trying
to re-stitch this sacred canopy.

Weathered overalls
And yellow hard hats
Smoke cigarettes
Berate colleagues
And tell stories
Often heard
Yet always applauded
They, watch marshmallows drop
And foam rise

Suits and stockings
Single file
Advance forward, steadily
To see
Their names in print
Or safety nets torn, mended
Or perhaps
To see who tells the jokes
And who are
The punch lines

Meanwhile
Men, and Woman
Pull in nets
As Perspiration, and fish guts
Combine a scent
As welcome as the melting marshmallows
And warm editions

A Man with best friend
Head into hills
Long before the bottles delivered
And the papers stacked
They return after
The printers re-fire
And signs dragged indoors

The Men and Woman meet,
As friends wait on flat decks
Or through cracked windows
Tongues waving in the breeze,
They smoke cigarettes
Berate mates
And tell stories
Often heard
Yet always applauded

To Hone,
The friend who convinced me normality is not so hot
But poetry is…

A skylark above the Catlins pours out its song

The tide licks at the road along Molyneaux Bay
Sullenly without yesterday’s winter sun
Lightening the village’s ascent from beach to peak

Unrepenting the tide hisses at the road head-on
Pushing it closer by the day to the church
And the woman mowing beneath its yellow sides

The last voice to reach the pew by the door
Asked for a reasonable offer to start the bids
A visitor wonders how much is an old church worth

Sombre bush spills over rounded hill and gentle slopes
Where natives fell in headlong rush before axe and fire
And men and animals sucked the land of life

Poets and writers inhabit this chocolate box countryside
Neighbours to cows contained in tree-lined symmetry
Churning their bed of winter mud for the night ahead

The tramper climbs the fence to drink but shies away
Where hoofmarks merge with rancid silt and turbid waters flow
And trout and whitebait struggle against the odds

Skylarks as far as North Cape take up a song that varies little
it’s steep
from here on
rock
tree
ocean

that one
pohutukawa
holding out on
rock against the
sight of ocean
in its branches
vivid in shadow
against the
wind-flustered
sea
cat’s-paws
swells
the surf
feeding on
the silence
between
its comings &
goings

you could drop
right through
this to fall
into the cold
roilings of the
tide find
yourself at
the edge
of memory
a spit of sand
long each
grain a colour
of things known
of dawns in
the hands
of love
stars going
out on the
breeze

you could drop
right through
this skin
that sky
on edge
where the sea
tips over
drop through
the distance
to where
the last rocks
norwest
are clotted
against the
tidal rips
anchored out
in sheer memory
of our having
been

you could drop
right through
the twisting heart
of the waters
below the undertow
of kelp taking
you down in
the murk
of this
life as it
comes away
from your
self the tern
pitched sharp
down into
the waves
closing the hunt
on the fish
underneath
the silver
leaves of
our days

you could
drop right
through

*meaning ‘the leaping place of the spirits’, the place in the Maori world where the souls of the dead take leave of Aotearoa

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