Beckenham

Today I watched a digger eat a church I knew and loved
When the last familiar piece was shattered, gone and dead
Even the digger hung its head

Shag Rock

Shag Rock is gone
And I will never look on it again.
Life size
Set against a burning sky
Tide playing, restless, at its feet.

Last time I looked on you
You did not say goodbye
Nor turn your face away
Nor give me any sign at all.

I was the one who looked away, too soon.

Sneak Up

The Mist and I have been playing
Sneak Up Granny.
Everytime I turn my back she creeps forward two steps
So that now I can't see the tops, can't see the heads, can't see the channel
Can't see much of anything at all
'Cept grey-green water and the feet of the hills dangling in it.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Untitled

You took a precious thing
And used it recklessly
And I was that precious thing.