Poem with several names
eels in the Puhinui creek were tough
they'd had industrial waste
and the bad manners of cattle to put up with
you could lure them with a rotten egg
broken on water
you could catch them with a hook
or the indigenous way
with a meat bait tightly wrapped in string
you could tip them wriggling out of a sack
on to the concrete path at home
and whack them on the tail
or stab them in the head
you could section and boil them
ith a garnish of your choice
and eat them
but you couldn't kill them
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Place
previously published in The Century (HeadworX, 1998)
in this dream
I am at huia rd
where I haven't lived
for fifteen years
and the wisteria threaded fence
I lean on
has long been pulled down
gone too
are the faces of those
I expect to converse with here
some to other towns
or parts of town
and some into the free fall
of identities
accessible only in dreams
seeming to drift
outside my body
I look
at the pencilled height marks
left by its growth
on the stud
of the fibrolite garage
to move
is also to move away
from the absences of others
and bring their occasions
on waking
to different fierce light
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Matukutururu
previously published in The Century (HeadworX, 1998)
mclaughlin's gashed hill
tiered into a ziggurat
by quarryings
the homestead removed
and its foundations
a place of weeds
dust hangs
over the turning
in the road
carved shallow
on a weathered block
a head facing four directions
four mouths eight eyes
four warning tongues
ceremonies
to appease mataaho
have disappeared from the region
in flight
the sunk vertebrae
of drystone partitions
between archaic gardens
where the landscape
recedes into its name
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McLaughlin's
previously published in The Century (HeadworX, 1998)
empty for a summer
the house was augmented by a swallow's nest
built above one corner of the front door
with attendant spatterings on the porch
in memory the bee wall
was the south side of the nursery
packed with honey like a lion skin
that sort of quality of legend
what happens in dreams
is that you wake to an artificial dawn
and the familiar landscape removed
from the frames of the windows
rolled up and replaced by sky
or inauthentic trees and hills
out of reach of yolky magnolia pollen
and the quarry siren
or a room from each
of the houses where you have lived
is joined with the others in a confusion
negotiable only by you and only asleep
irresistible sense
at the reunion
not of recalling the past
but of imagining this future from that past
forbidden the stairs by restorers' ropes and signs
hours of youth pass unhindered
through the still procession of atoms
in a house made fit for the dead to live in always
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Papatoetoe poems
previously published in The Century (HeadworX, 1998)
1 Early Days
the billy that rang empty
on its hook against the gate post
last thing at night
was full of the colour of starlight at dawn
2 Originals
them kumaras is really gallopin now
mr kilgour in braces and hobnail boots
he'd stamp and click on the path
like a horse modestly skittish in its stall
when he came over to use our phone
party line 796D
he shouted as if he believed
a hollow and not altogether reliable tube
connected him with his son in henderson
there was also the backward boy opposite
whose face became more anxious
left behind in the childhood we all shared
and errol you could never get a straight answer from
a wigwam for a goose's bridle he'd say
or we had one but wheels fell off
3 Archipelago
in the sunday school tableau of iniquity
someone has eaten too many honey and banana sandwiches
and someone is copying someone else's homework
the angel of the lord
disappointed by the accommodation industry in gomorrah
smirks to one side in a bedsheet
4 Task
the lawn
divided in three
for each to mow his share
smallest in front
but awkward
round the shrubs
the middle clear
except for the clothesline
which paspalum fringed
the rest secluded
leading to recklessness
among fruit trees
parts of the world
that if I don't remember
won't have been
5 Neighbourhood
not that I want the bottlebrush shrubs
the since defunct council planted on our verges
not to have grown
nor that the houses whose owners' names
I knew by heart a generation ago
need to be renamed
but that someone should notice
like me in passing
6 The Headstones
calm pasture for cattle
and the constantly unfolding
episode of the motorway
the detached green fingertip
of the absorbed borough
presses into estuarine mud
lettered in dry uprights
everyone's best attempt
at what can't be said too often
every love second love word love is love
7 The Rec
a line of poplars
thrashing as the wind comes on
individual gestures within
an encompassing choreography
boys walk to the crease
in their first creams
in their padded gloves so much better
than the rubber-spiked ones we wore
I nearly lost teeth here
over the other side by the school
misreading a rising ball
from my brother when he was fast
8 Address
loose metal at the roadside
signed by footprints and hooves
and the turning curves
of audibly sprung cars
thick flap of the upright
white wooden letter box
through which I still receive
indecipherable mail in dreams
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Old Mangere Bridge
previously published in Human Scale (Sudden Valley Press, 2002)
1
one man
swings his line
baited for kahawai
or better
out over the parapet
to trail among fry
in the tidal channel
his mate
belly bare
and hair-strewn
under his rucked shirt
sleeps off
a hard night
in the imminent sun
where terns wait
and gulls ride
as far as the heads
the water sheen
sky mirror
colour of herons
replenishes wader beds
2
imagine flivvers full
of flappers and flasks
thumping the
concrete road bed
to and from
the south shore cabaret
between wars
until it burned
and the tough
grist of fishermen
deck hands and wharfies
in the smoke-cube
public bar
of the tavern
opposite the docks
in innnocent railway days
tidal levels
of employment unemployment
settlement and
unsettling news
brought home to this
most distant
pocket of the planet
taking men away
to die in mud or
desert trenches
or the sea's
wet cerements
their monuments
blitzed by inarticulate
dog-squirt taggers' signs
3
salt smell and
smell of ancient fire
and fragrant
bark of manuka
at weekends
on the mountain
when it had more
low scrub than grass
my father
echoed mcwhirter
to the quails'
three-syllable cries
the volcano pit
whorled into
land-snail form
a fixture
but to see again in mind
the berhampore leaning to port
with its fencible cargo
a century and a half ago
would require
a mind exclusive of
the tar roads
climbing suburb hills
church spires
and graves
clear pasture
and dull sewage ponds
the new bridge
stapled to the tide
and the old bridge
until it concludes
in fennel clumps
toetoe and empty air
disused like history
in the ever-present now
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