Just when I needed it, I received several gifts of encouragement this week.
One such gift was the painting above painted on ‘baby iron’ (small sized corrugated iron). It was painted by Corrina Woodason who wrote that it was inspired by a poem I wrote about the Dunedin suburb of Caversham. The poem was in a recent issue of the New Zealand literary magazine, Landfall.
I’m proud to stand beside this painting. I do not know the artist, but I want to thank her for her encouragement and beautiful response to my poem which I have since renamed, and printed below:
In Caversham I have yearned to be closer to the horizon
Caversham is more than I can hear
at any one time.
More than the slow drum-roll
of a goods train passing through.
More than the monontone
of a single plane in a marble sky,
the clatter of the rescue helicopter
directly overhead, the background
oceanic surge
of biddable motorway traffic.
In Caversham, I have yearned
to be closer to the horizon,
that splinter of grey
ocean you can barely see.
In Caversham I have seen wooden porches
used as podiums for beer drinkers.
Lawns covered in polystyrene hail.
A blaze of light at the end of a passage
opened to the daylight, both ends.
Caversham is the factory worker
carrying his takeaway coffee as carefully
as a newborn.
It’s the skateboarder towing a staffie.
The Four Square supermarket
under its careworn verandah.
The woman on her way to the Sports Dairy
in bare feet and a black t-shirt
that says, ‘I Am So L.A.’
in hotpink. It is the foxie
tied to a railing outside the Book Bus.
Kay McKenzie Cooke
11th Letter In 