Sunday, December 20, 2009

At St Marks

If I were to say that love trans-figured your faces,
It would be nothing but the truth.
That love wove itself around you a shelter
That love whispered the leaves and made the sun shine
That love itself has soaked into the very marrow of your bones
It would be nothing but the truth.

I will tell now that love weighed you,
Found all the cracks and filled them in.
That you feared love, but love did not fear you.

And at St Marks, in the crook of the river, under the watchful eye of the hills,
You found your courage and surrendered to it.

Friday, December 04, 2009

West Coast Beach

My happiness is sunning herself on the stones
Her clothes are too big
Her bones stick out awkwardly
She is picking up the pieces of her life
On here, another over there.
She is laying them on the table, piecing them together

She picks up the stones and puts them on her skin
Letting the warmth seep in.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

On needing more time.

But actually, inside, it's still dark, if I were to be really honest. Raw and open and touchy as a wobbly tooth. Don't impinge on my darkness just yet.

Untitled.

Stumbling around in the semi-dark
Tense and worn
Can't find a dry spot to rest on
Can't find a shoulder to lean on.

Heathcote

River slide by me
Silently
Soothe me
Cool hand on fever

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Untitled.

I come here among and between the tall trees
Leaf bound and light bound
Darkly perfect and tightly rooted in the cool ground

I make myself a hollow for my home
Finding I am not me less my grief
But there is room here for that too.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Untitled.

I actually saw the alarm go off
Just for a moment, before you hit the snooze button.
You know as well as I do that you should be getting mentally prepared,
Because morning is well on its way.
The bulbs are doing their bit, peaking sleepy faces up out of the cool earth
Dozing by the river, by the letterbox, up in the Park.
Almost time for you to lumber out of the long night
Pull on your garments, put your face on and
Join the living.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Lyttelton

I never tire of the port
Of the sea birds, smell of fish and chips, accents, hippies and white trash dogs.

I never tire.

I never tire of it already humming when I arrive,
Brimful of oil tankers, container ships, fishing boats, ferries, tug boats, ships carrying logs or cars or fertilizer.  I never tire of the port, keeping itself busy with trucks, buses, cars and tiny yellow helmeted people driving forklifts and other lifting, carrying, moving, shifting, stacking and unstacking machines.  I never tire of it quiet and empty, sea hovering placidly around the wharf, not bothering to look busy.

I never tire of the port, of the rocky outcrops on the hill tops, pushing their scarred faces into the soft bosom of the sky.  Of the yogic clouds sinking lower, lower, a little lower, over green-gold hills, of the glassy sea coloured sea, routinely defying description, or of the rocks, or of the heads, or of the fall down, tumble down jetties.  I never tire.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Hiatus

Poetry's gone sour in my blood
Words stagnant and moulding
Big black dog been sitting on 'em for so long they 
unfurl slow, folds in all the wrong places
Crooked and cold and stiff, like myself.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Untitled

Deep down in the deepest part of the deep end I am.
Tucking myself away I am.
Holding my own heart, stilling my own hair, smoothing my own breath.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Coalgate #1

I came reluctantly this time
Frugal
Not wanting to unnecessarily spend my energy on others

But here, I am unfolded 
By a quiet hum of something that is not quite joy

Bandaging me in peace

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Deletion or All the Grace I can Muster

I want to take your life in my hands and
Scrub it clean of me

Erase my songs
Send back my poems
Do not even think of me

But, there is love
Although not between us
And that love-that-is-not-between-us
Compells me to stand very still
And do nothing at all.

The Monthly

What I long for is
A chest to lay my head on
Hands to hold
Arms to rest in

West Coast # 1

My bag is extra heavy today
Filled with stones.

I have come here
Where everything is perfectly in its place
And it has made me long for pieces of that belonging

I will take the pieces home and
Put them on the sill
On the shelves
By my bed

I will see them from time to time and think
I, too, belong.

I see another and add it to my bag.

Tauranga Bay, West Coast


Rocky hull of a ship
Upturned
Abandoned
Mired in the sea bed
Just off the coast

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Hide and Seek

I write it down
Prayer
And draw lines around it
Prayer

Then I undraw the lines because
Prayer is not the thin thing I once thought
It is a big, wide, deep thing

An endless movement from many places
In, to one place
An open door between my heart and your heart
A trickle, a river, a flash flood
A quick dash for high ground
And a quiet wandering in a sunlit summer dusk

Prayer is an ache I carry in my heart
Wordless and deep
A waterfall making its inexorable way to you
An angry sea returning
Over and
Over 
To the constant shore

Prayer is a bird song
Quick and telling
From back behind me in the bush
A yellow flower floating on a millpond sea

A shell
A leaf
A seed pod
A word
An image
A blue light

Inside me,
It is the pull toward you that never lets me go

Prayer is me waiting for you
And you waiting for me