Parsifal We all shoot the swan in youthful trespass ignorant of our misdeed. Not all of us, though, get off so lightly and get a second chance to be embraced as saviour fool. And the second chance, if it comes…
The year was 69 (for Sam Sampson) Reading your poem and re-reading my reading I remembered the bar Colin painted for Maurice in the studio among trees below the house above the inlet at Arapito Road with a text that…
The Old Government Buildings There it sprawls, embodying magnitude – but also symmetry – not sure whether to label itself “buildings” or “building”. Dignity would demand the plural, but “Largest wooden building in the southern Hemisphere” denotes it as singular.…
Written on the Soul H.M.D. 1928-1958 A July winter among the drab Scots stone, rain squalls, southerly buster; icy nodes scour my face. But you feel nothing. I look down at your stillness, your last smile, but your eyes are…
Memory Harbour (i.m. Pvt. Robert Brownlee: obit. 14/vi/1916) Whatever challenge is carelessly thrown down there are those who will always soldier on when strangers loom and cast their shadow. It’s dead low-water on Memory Harbour: a crab patrol sidles across…
Let me tell you about one more statue This one is a jazz man lying on his side. One knee raised, chipping away at a gimlet. The ruffles of his shirt spill down below his chest over the pedestal…
Ulex europaeus, gorse A hedge right here he spades a hole, digs me in. Such a fine view of the sea across to a peninsula, a marae, the blue smoke and steam curling from the ground. I put down roots…
Dad When I go to visit him at 4:30 on a Friday he thinks Sunday and looks into my eyes as if I might know. I don’t. I don’t even know when his dinner time is. We occupy different worlds…
THE BOOK OF CHURL I Churl stamps through the swamp. Wet scowl, muddy shins, leather sandals chafing. Bile. He eyes the shaggy blacksmith’s wife but she will not, will not have him. So he stomps back to the kine, who…
The Bare Hook Don’t ask what this is all about. At the end of the row, you start over. The way in is the way out. From Toulouse, France, you wrote what you say to hush each new lover: Don’t…
